Time and Again: Variable Z
by Twisted-Optimism
Summary: Liz did what she came to do; she went back in time and saved Zan. But Zan is nothing if not dangerous, and no one could've predicted the results. Full summary inside.
1. Chapter 1: New Beginnings

**Summary**: Liz did what she came to do; she went back into the past and saved Zan. But Zan is nothing if not dangerous, and every action he makes creates a ripple effect that will change the world Liz knew beyond all recognition. It's a new timeline, but does that really mean it will be a better one?

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Liz Parker, Zan, or any of the other characters of the TV show (and book series) Roswell.

**AN**: Updates for this story WILL be erratic, and I may be making some changes in the first story in order to accommodate some ideas I had for this story later on. Any changes I make will be minor, though, and when/if I make them I'll do it when I post a new chapter and that chapter's authors note will tell you what changed and in what chapter of the first story.

Also, I apologize. It's like three in the morning and I'm not super coherent.

Pairings, for the moment, are undecided (although I'm leaning towards certain ones). That means if you want a pairing and can make a good enough argument, I'll consider adding it to the story. Also, forgive me if the Isabel/Alex stuff seems stiff - I'll try to avoid it, but it's not my favorite pairing so I might have some problems writing it.

Enjoy. (:

* * *

Ava drove the whole night through, going so fast it was really a miracle that she didn't hit anything or attract the attention of the local five-oh. She was still driving long after the urgent, scary pulsing of her connection with Zan had morphed into an intense, confusing grief. She pushed it aside before it could drag her down too and put the accelerator to the floor, picking up dust along the deserted desert highway.

She wondered what it'd be like to see him again. She couldn't stop thinking about it. Of course, that was nothing new; ever since she'd watched Rath shove him under that truck, he'd been the only thing she'd spent any time thinking about.

She'd stayed up at night wondering what he'd been thinking about in that last moment, as he'd watched the head-lights coming at him. Had he known that it was Rath and Lonnie who'd done it to him? Had he thought she'd been involved? Had he blamed her, hated her… had he felt totally alone? Or had he just stared, mind blank with shock as he watched his death approaching?

She'd hoped he had been in shock. She'd hoped he wouldn't have had enough time to think it through and realize none of his crew had called out or stepped up to help him. She'd _prayed _he hadn't had even a moment to see just how completely he'd been betrayed.

Now… she knew he'd figured it out. He'd had months to think about that moment, after all. And she could tell he thought she was involved in what happened to him; why else would he his mind be so closed off from hers? Even if he had no idea about this connection between them – which made sense, since she hadn't known about it either – she knew enough about how the mind worked to know that if he trusted her, that door would've stayed open. So, obviously, he at least suspected she'd had something to do with his 'death'.

But now that he was alive, she had a whole new string of questions. Where had he been all this time? What was he doing in New Mexico? Who had him now – and why? Was he okay – really okay? Did he remember everything, was he healing, was he the same person he'd been before? And how the _hell_ did he survive?

Despite the control she'd maintained all night, Ava felt her eyes welling up. That mental image… Zan on the ground, broken and bleeding and _hurt_, and the three of them just… just running away.

If Ava had thought for even a second that there was any possibility that that truck hadn't killed him, she _never_ would have left him there. She would've even jumped the coop early and escaped Lonnie and Rath if she'd had to; she would've searched for him for as long as it would've taken to find out the truth. But she'd seen that truck hit. She'd heard the impact, watched the gore fly, listened to the people screaming… There was _no way_ he could've survived.

Or so she'd thought.

She wasn't stupid; she knew even then that she never should've gone with them after what they'd done. Hell – the _right_ thing to do would've been for her to grow a pair and make the assholes pay for how they'd betrayed Zan. But she wasn't strong like that, and she'd been too afraid of facing this alien planet alone to even try.

In fact, the only thing that had finally given her the guts to walk away had been meeting Liz and the others and realizing that something crucial had changed. She wasn't sure if it had happened when Lonnie and Rath had killed Zan, or slowly as they'd grown up on the streets of Earth, or the very moment they'd died the first time around, but no matter what Lonnie said, Ava _wasn't_ the fucking Queen of Antar anymore.

She was a girl who'd grown up stealing, eating out of trash cans, dodging authority figures and kissing the asses of her peers, partying and occasionally having underage sex with strange and sometimes very sketchy guys. She didn't have a famous name, or a royal bloodline dictating who she could talk to or what she could do. She didn't have – and most importantly, hadn't _ever had _– a husband in Zan. He was just a boy she'd grown up with, a boy she'd known completely and loved with her whole heart in a way the Ava of Antar had never really known or loved her husband.

Ava wasn't that woman anymore.

And she didn't even _want _to be that woman.

From there, it hadn't taken long for her to realize that Lonnie and Rath _weren't _her family – weren't even her friends – and that she was in more danger with them then she could ever be alone. She'd struck out on her own, totally ready to face a new life on Earth, to make a _home_.

But she'd only done that because she thought – she'd _known_ – that Zan was dead.

Ava clenched her hands on the steering wheel until the knuckles of her hands went white. She kept following his trail well into the morning, which is when she began to realize that Zan was _moving_.

She tugged at the thin rope of their connection, feeling that same well of grief from the small crack in the door between them. She pushed at it gently, trying to get a look inside, but he'd gotten control of his mind again and the door wouldn't budge. If she hadn't gotten her foot in during that attack, she had a feeling she wouldn't even be able to find him at all anymore.

Ava swallowed and bit her lip, trying not to take that thought personally. It was ridiculous – judging by the lack of response from his end, she doubted he had any idea she was there, so she doubted it was personal.

She kept going until almost noon, when a sudden, weird prickle danced up the back of her neck. She slowed the car down, looking around for the source of her unease. There was nothing around her but grassland and fences.

Her eye caught on something strange, and without giving herself time to really think it through she pulled to a stop and stepped out of the car. She glanced both ways, but she didn't see any houses or people or anything anywhere.

For several hours now, she'd been driving along besides a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. But up ahead there was a break in the metal mesh – a place where the thick wire looked to have bubbled outward, opening a semi-circle breach some five feet in radius. As if it had been… blown open.

There was something wrong with this – something _familiar_. Something… alien. She could feel it raising the hair along the back of her neck, making goose pimples rise up on her arms. She _knew _this energy, knew how it felt and what it looked like when people used it without subtlety.

And Zan had been here not that long ago.

Ava put the car in park and got out, glancing around to make sure there wasn't anybody else around. She made her way over to the gap in the fencing, staring at the melted edges of the metal and the black scorching of the grass. Somebody… somebody was trying to get out from inside the fence. Somebody alien, who'd been in enough of a hurry not to make something smaller or clean up after themselves. They'd just let off a burst of energy to open the way, and…

Ava frowned. The energy wasn't Zan's.

When she was standing just inside the warped circle of metal, Ava slowly leaned down until her hand lay flat on the grass.

_Zan was half running with, half carrying a short, familiar brunette toward the fence. She lifted a hand, face averted, and the metal twisted and warped – _

_ They hit the fence line in a matter of seconds, Zan shoving the woman through before ducking through behind. They took off towards a dark shape in the road, a van –_

Ava gasped, pulling her hand from the grass and tearing up.

"Oh, god." She whispered. She'd known he was alive – had felt it inside of her mind – but to _see _him, even for a second... "He was here. He was _safe_, he was escap –"

An arm wrapped around her waist, a hand coming up to wrap around her mouth. Ava tried to scream, tried to buck free, but whoever had a hold of her was strong and he wasn't giving way. Ava kicked back, hitting something solid, and the guy behind her groaned and shook her sharply.

_Where the _hell_ did this guy come from…?!_

She struggled harder, trying to think of a way to get free without giving away what she was. She clawed at his hands, kicked some more, but it wasn't getting her anywhere. She was just starting to consider using her abilities when the guy turned, taking her with him until she was facing off to the side, where a giant slab of the grass had risen up to show a concrete room.

Somebody walked out of the room toward Ava, flanked on either side by half a dozen random looking people. Ava gasped behind the muffling grip of her captor and felt the blood drain from her face.

Ava stared, cursing her luck that this little reunion had to come _now _of all times.

"Yo." Lonnie smiled, blood oozing down her face from a bloodied, purple lump on her temple. "Long time no see, lil' sis."

She whimpered and squeezed her eyes shut, reaching out towards that doorway…

_Zan!_ She cried desperately.

But the door didn't so much as shake.

A slender hand reached up to Ava's temple and the world went black.

* * *

Zan brought his thumb up to dig into his temple, hoping to use the pressure to fight off his pending headache. It didn't work, but there wasn't much else he was willing to do right now; he was in the vent of Jennifer Coleman's dorm, waiting for the stupid blonde chick to leave so he could pick through her stupid friggin mail, and if nothing else the pain should keep him awake.

He didn't get why this had to happen; Beth had mentioned Tess's shed in one of her Journals and had even talked about its defenses and what exactly they'd found in there. But what she hadn't included was – surprise, surprise – the friggin address. Which meant if he was going to go through with his plan of stealing as many of Tess's advantages as he possibly could before they even knew he was still alive… he was going to have to do a little B&E.

Not a problem, obviously; nothing he hadn't done before. Except that, well… he _hadn't_. At least, not in a friggin college dormitory, where there was a fucking security system to get in and a couple dozen night owls who could've spotted him creeping around and staking out the place. To be honest, it probably didn't matter much if anyone saw him, considering there was a shit load of people coming and going here all the time, but on the off chance Tess realized her shit was missing before he got around to getting himself ready for her, he needed to make sure nobody could finger him as the one responsible.

Unfortunately, that meant waiting for the unexpectedly early bird Coleman to finish her cereal, get off her fucking ass and get out of his goddamn way.

But apparently, she liked her daytime television.

Zan's back throbbed, and with a wince he shifted, knee hitting the aluminum wall across from him. He froze, but the blonde chick didn't so much as move.

Zan scowled, feeling his all too familiar temper catching up to him. He was pretty damn sure Beth would've told him to calm down and be patient or whatever, but this was friggin ridiculous. If he waited in this fucking vent any longer he'd have to start eating the bugs to keep from starving. As it was, he wasn't sure his back would ever friggin unbend.

Coleman moved, and Zan felt his hope begin to grow, thinking any moment she was going to get up and head towards that door of hers and go –… well, any goddamn place, really.

She leaned forward, watching the screen intently, and settled again.

With a muffled scream, Zan pushed his fists against his eyes and willed away the desire to brutally murder the college student. She'd deserve it. Girl was paying, what, a couple grand a semester to sit there and stare at a TV? She should be in a fucking library, studying her stupid ass off! What the hell was wrong with kids these days?

Zan noticed the hypocrisy of this and promptly ignored it.

Deciding that enough was enough, Zan put his hand against the wall and, searching for the familiar buzz of electricity, he followed the lines of it and…

The room went dark, the television shutting off with a cheerful _click_.

"… Are you kidding me? Come on, really?" Coleman gaped, grasped her hair and threw herself back into the couch. "They were _just _about to show who took Sonny's kid!"

Zan watched, caught somewhere between disgust with her dramatics and sadistic satisfaction for having caused her some fraction of the annoyance she'd caused him. After a few minutes of pouting, she made her way to the bathroom and emerged – twenty minutes later – dressed and carrying a purse. Zan groaned gratefully and almost cheered as she left.

With a quick mental twitch, he locked the door behind her. Pushing the vent cover free and using a little of his abilities to widen the gap, he slid into her room and immediately made for the table of papers he'd noticed a couple hours earlier.

He sorted through it quickly and – after he'd found a little envelope with all the needed information – made a little tour around her room. He didn't expect much out of it (he really doubted she had any idea what she'd been dragged into), which is why he was so surprised when he found a picture of her and Ava in a flimsy plastic picture album by her bed.

Oh – obviously it wasn't Ava; Zan couldn't have gotten her into a getup that straight-laced if he'd paid her. But the very fact that her face was so familiar was enough to tell Zan he was looking at the infamous Tess Harding. That was about all he could tell about the picture at a glance; they were sitting at a table talking about something – recently, judging by the how old they looked in the photo – and they didn't even seem to realize the camera was there.

He pulled the photo out of the plastic casing and checked the back, hoping to find a date or maybe the location where they'd been. It probably wouldn't have mattered much anyway; if he was reading these stories about her right, she didn't strike him as the type to go to insane lengths to get what she wanted. If he had to guess, he'd figure this Coleman chick was just an easy target; she went to the right school and - judging by the phone call he'd overheard earlier - her dad was the Dean here. Tess'd probably met Coleman when she was getting Alex enrolled so he could use the computer thingie and just decided to take advantage of it.

Somebody wiggled the doorknob and, finding it locked, muttered a curse. Zan groaned and hurried toward the vent, shoving the album in his back pocket and pulling himself up into the narrow opening as quickly and quietly as he could.

The wall had only barely reformed when Coleman's roommate – a significantly less pretty blonde girl – made her way into the room and hit the light switch. Zan started making his way out of the vents, way beyond ready to be done with the whole fucking thing.

Behind him, he heard the roommate's perplexed mutter. "What the hell happened to the lights?"

* * *

The trailer… was not what Zan was expecting.

For one thing, even though he was huddling in the sage-brush a hundred feet from the thing, he could see through the windows that there was a lot of stuff in there; Beth said it was pretty much empty when she'd gotten there. Which meant either Tess would be moving it all at some point in the future, or somebody else would get there between now and the time Beth had gone there originally and clean out the place. If it was the former, then there was a reason – if it was the latter… well, Zan wasn't sure what that would mean, other than it tickled his sadistic side to imagine the big bad alien Queen getting her secret stash secretly _stolen_ while she was in Roswell playing the goody-goody girlfriend.

Unfortunately, that didn't look real likely, considering. There were machines floating through the air in circles around the trailer - and the faint vibration of the molecules felt both crystalline and _living._ Far as Zan knew, that pretty much _had_ to be Antarian, which meant it was probably those flying security bomb things Beth had described (and named, though of course he couldn't remember the name anymore), only…

Well, there were six of them.

"Awesome." Zan whispered irritably.

Yeah. She probably hadn't been robbed. In fact, if she owned this much shit and had six of those bomb things at her disposal to protect it all, Zan figured it must say something important that she had moved it all – including most of the security – at some point between now and when Beth had found it. The Journal has said the only things in there had been the crystal navigational... thingy and the translated papers…

So, basically, only the shit Tess had needed to get them headed off to Antar.

Zan scowled down at the little trailer, wishing he has some basic idea how those friggin bombs worked. He knew a little something about security systems, considering he'd had to bypass a few of them in his younger days, and the problem with security systems was that some of them wouldn't just alert the cops if you got in without the password – they'd send a signal if you cut the wire to them, too. Zan wasn't sure if these bombs worked like that, but there was still a possibility that if he set them off, not only would he risk blowing his ass up, but he'd risk warning Tess somebody was going after her stuff.

Still, Zan couldn't just back off of this. He needed those papers and he _needed _that crystal so that if Tess ever went totally postal and realized she didn't have to be friends with the other three of the Roswell Four to force them into the Granolith and back to Antar, she wouldn't be able to. Plus, who knew what else could be in that place that might be important?

Not to mention, all this B&E was making his inner klepto twitchy.

Sitting there, sweating his ass off in the sage-brush in the middle of the friggin desert, Zan's planning quickly lost momentum. His mind drifted back to his childhood, when he'd spent a cold afternoon hanging with his crew in this department store. He'd wandered away from the others and started watching cartoons - he thought of it now because there had been one he'd been completely enraptured with, about a road runner and an idiot dog in the desert. Or, no - not a dog, a coyote, who for some dumb ass reason always thought he could catch the road runner by doing stupid shit like dropping anvils off cliffs and -

Zan blinked.

Without letting himself hope too much, Zan looked back at the trailer – which, unlike what he'd been half expecting, was flat against the ground.

He spent a few more minutes carefully tracking the bombs, making sure they kept circling the house without ever going inside. When he was certain, he grinned.

Time to pull a Wile E. Coyote.

* * *

_Max wouldn't even look at her stomach anymore.  
_

_Liz hadn't noticed at first, because she'd been avoiding it herself, but lately it'd been pretty obvious. He used to take every opportunity to drag his fingers from her belly button to her heart, and the one time she'd asked why, he'd just said that he loved her soft skin and the way her heartbeat felt against his hands.  
_

_No longer, though. He caressed her waist, her arms, her neck, her back, and even her ribs, but he wouldn't go anywhere near her scar.  
_

_He wrapped his arms around her and drew circles on her back with the hand that wasn't holding her cheek. Liz watched his face for a moment, noting the stubble and the shadows under his eyes, and then she pulled his hand between them and laid it flat against the raised white line left behind from when he'd cut his healing of her short to try and save their child.  
_

_He visibly tensed, then tried to hide it. She could still feel it thrumming through his arms and chest though. She pressed her palm over the hand on her stomach and put the other on his chest. His heart was _pounding_. _

_"Max," she whispered, thumb tracing patterns on the back of his hand. "It's okay." _

_He looked at her, eyes dark with exhaustion and regret. "No, it's not."  
_

_Liz shook her head minutely, already seeing him pull away. "Max -"  
_

_"Liz." Max cut her off, pulling his hand from her stomach and sitting up. His head and shoulders drooped, his hair and the darkness in the room working together to hide his face from her. "This is my fault. Kivar only attacked because of who  
_we _are - Micheal, Isabel and me. If it hadn't been for me... Liz, it's because of who I was that our child is dead." _

_Liz flinched. She'd been wondering for a long time whether or not she was ready to talk about this with him, and she was... but that didn't mean it didn't hurt to hear it put so bluntly. They'd had a list of names picked out, but that had mostly been a formality - Max had been jokingly holding out for the name 'Kal El', which Liz figured Micheal had put him up to. _

_In the end, Liz was pretty sure they would've named him Alex.  
_

_"Max," Liz said after a moment, chest squeezing. "Kivar was always going to invade. Even if you hadn't been Zan, if you'd been some normal human guy... We would still be in the middle of a war between planets. Our child would have been at risk no matter what we did or who you were. We knew that going in to this." _

_She paused and waited for Max to say something, but he was silent. She sighed and continued. "And that's ignoring the fact that if you hadn't been who you are, I never would've survived long enough to get pregnant. Or are you forgetting I belong to the 'I got shot by a trucker' club?"  
_

_That, at least, got a response. Max turned and glanced at her, and for the first time she caught a glimpse of the tears in his eyes. She bit her lip against the familiar twinge of grief. He'd spent most of her pregnancy visibly uncomfortable with the idea; it had only been in that last month, when he'd felt their son kick for the first time, that he'd really begun to feel like a father.  
_

_Liz sat up and wrapped herself around him from behind, laying her cheek on his shoulder and hugging him tightly. She got teary too, then.  
_

_"You would've made a really amazing dad." She whispered with a trembling smile. Max shuddered, and then turned and took her in his arms. _

Liz blinked, sunlight hitting her face and chasing away the dream. She swallowed past the ache lodged in her throat and rolled onto her back, hand reaching up to absently rub at a stretch of skin on her stomach. It still stung there, although she was already beginning to forget exactly why.

She didn't notice the tears on her face until her concerned mother came up and demanded to know what could've possibly happened so early in the morning.

"I..." She muttered, then shrugged and smiled. "I was dreaming."

* * *

**AN: **Review.


	2. Chapter 2: Domino

**Summary**: Liz did what she came to do; she went back into the past and saved Zan. But Zan is nothing if not dangerous, and every action he makes creates a ripple effect that will change the world Liz knew beyond all recognition. It's a new timeline, but does that really mean it will be a better one?

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Liz Parker, Zan, or any of the other characters or places of the TV show (and book series) Roswell.

**AN**: Second chapter – wanted to get it out before Christmas. I apologize because it's pretty short, but I'm also considering making all my chapters this short. It's easier to post, to edit, to… well, everything really, so I think it might be worth a try, if only to (hopefully) speed up updates.

Also, it's not as well edited as my usual chapters, but it should be okay.

Translations for the (made up) binary code are at the bottom. They aren't important or anything, but if you want to know, there they are. Assuming, of course, that ffnet keeps them on this time :\

Enjoy!

* * *

Zan took another pull on the plastic straw, what was left of his coke gurgling wetly from the bottom corners of the cardboard cup. He tossed it into the corner of his van – where a good-sized pile of trash had accumulated over the past week – and caught a whiff of just how badly he was beginning to smell. He winced, rolled onto his knees and tugged off his shirt, tossing it to yet another corner with the rest of his laundry.

Over the past week, he'd been too focused on his Los Cruces trip to pay any real attention to the little stuff like eating healthy, keeping things clean, and renting hotel rooms. Granted, that had just as much to do with it as the fact that when Beth had… _vanished_, most of her money and everything that was left of her original stuff went with her, leaving Zan with just barely enough to get by. He'd decided to save everything he could to tide him over until he could get a job and set himself up in Roswell.

Granted, that meant he probably still had at least another month of living in his van ahead of him (he'd made the papers he needed and everything already, and he'd found a nice little secluded spot in the middle of an empty oasis way the fuck out of the way, where nobody would find his van and anything else he decided to hide in there)…

But, hey. He'd lived in worse places, right?

"Not that I don't appreciate the view." Said a soft, mocking voice behind him. "But next time you might want to warn a girl, you know?"

Zan jumped up, his head hitting the ceiling with a dull _thud_. He fell on his ass and twisted around, eyes fixing immediately on a smirking Beth lounging against the rear doors.

"Jesus fuck, Beth." He muttered sharply. "You scared the living shit out of me."

She smiled. And then, in a move totally unlike the Beth he'd actually spent time with, her eyes scanned slowly up and down his body, that little teasing smirk never easing in the slightest. Zan blushed and instinctively reached one arm up to cover himself, and then – feeling like a girl – immediately dropped it. Her grin widened.

Grabbing a shirt and jerking it down over his head, Zan kept his face averted until he was totally sure the blush had cooled. When he finally did turn around, she was leaning against the doors, examining his dirty clothes pile. She lifted up one of his nastier shirts with the tip of her index finger and frowned with disgust.

"Please tell me you're going to clean this up soon." She said, dropping the shirt on the pile and inching away. "This van was less nasty when there were dead bodies in it."

Zan snorted drily, leaning against the backside of the front seat and pointedly ignoring the mess. "Yeah, and by the way, in case I never said it before – thanks for _that_."

Beth smiled, leaning against the doors across from him. For a long moment they sat like that, her in contemplative silence, Zan suffering an awkward one. Every time he saw her lately, he felt conflicted. He knew that if he'd met and lost Beth a year ago and started seeing her ghost back when he had his crew at his back, he would've been friggin pissed at himself for being weak. But now, after everything else that'd happened, he was honestly just happy she was _here._

Weirdly enough, though, that almost made it worse. He should feel weak, and he should want her gone, but he didn't, and that was a constant reminder of how much he'd changed. How much he'd _lost_.

And he didn't just mean Beth.

"Have you thought about it?" She asked flatly, seemingly totally oblivious to his thoughts. Zan wondered about that, sometimes – if she was faking being oblivious, or if some part of him didn't want his imaginary friend to pick up on shit like that so he just… blocked her somehow. He hoped it was the latter, and that he could learn to do it on que, 'cause her knowing everything in his head had gotten old pretty damn quick.

Zan glanced at her and frowned. "About what?"

She stared at him with an expression he couldn't read. "About meeting me."

He thought about pretending that he didn't know what she was talking about – that he didn't immediately realize she was referencing her younger self, who he knew from the Journals worked and lived in some little joint called the Crashdown. But then she smiled at him and he realized there really wasn't any point in lying.

Which was friggin annoying, really.

"Yeah." He muttered. He reached one hand over toward the pile of trash and started _squeezing _it in his mind. He realized only too late that it was an obvious sign he was trying to distract himself; he didn't need to move his hand anymore, and he only ever did it when he needed something to mess with. He dropped his hand, but the trash kept compacting, colors swirling as the molecules contracted on each other. "So?"

Zan saw her head tilt in the corner of his eye. "Tell me what you think is going to happen."

He glared. "Why? You probably know more about what's goin' on in there than I do."

She shrugged. "Tell me anyway."

Zan stared at her for a minute, wondering if this was some kind of weird, twisted joke she was playing on him. Or he was playing on himself, actually. After a second he sighed and gave in; he knew he must really be getting paranoid when he started to suspect the voice in his head of plotting against him.

"I'm going to follow the plan." He muttered. "Heal Alex, get everything I need to get, introduce myself to the group and tell them –"

"That's not what I meant, and you know it." She cut in calmly. Zan looked her way again and caught her smiling sadly. "What do you think is going to happen between you and the other me."

She said it like a statement, and Zan softly scoffed. _Tell me how you_ feel_, Zan. _He mentally mocked, her voice ridiculously high-pitched. _Tell me what you're thinking_.

_God, it's like I've got my own, imaginary shrink_.

"Zan." She prompted, a hint of reprimand in her voice.

Zan shook his head, eyes falling closed. "Yeah, yeah, I'm thinking about it."

She rolled her eyes but didn't say anything. Zan took a deep breath and reached one hand up to scratch the back of his head; the pressure of his nails against his scalp helped him to stay calm.

"I guess some part of me really wants her to be just like you, y'know?" He opened his eyes. She was watching him with a contemplative expression, but she still didn't say anything. "I mean, I know she isn't going to be. You made such a big deal about how much the war and everything changed you – this chick hasn't been through any of the shit you talked about, so she's not gonna be _like_ you. Except… well, she still _is _you, so I guess a part of me really wants to think I'll just show up and it'll be you standing there. It's stupid, yeah, but that's just how I feel."

He didn't realize just how much he was talking until he stopped and the silence of the van swamped back in. He groaned a little and ducked his head; he really hadn't meant to rant like that.

After a second of silence, Beth spoke. "That… doesn't really answer my question."

He looked up at her.

"That tells me what you want to happen." She clarified. "Not what you think _will_ happen."

Zan looked at the wall of the van, one hand reaching up to fiddle with his dream-catcher. He leaned back, mood going just a little darker. "_Nothing's_ gonna happen, Beth."

Max… if he's anything like me, he's gonna see me as a potential threat and do everything he can to keep her away from me – which is exactly what he _should_ do." He was just going to be some strange guy showing up out of friggin' nowhere, looking shady as shit. If hanging with aliens had taught her anything, she'd either stay the hell away from him or only go near him to try and get info. And even then, if her boy Max was anything like Zan... There wasn't a chance in hell Zan would get anywhere near her without all Four of the Roswell gang standing in between them.

It was the _smart _reaction when somebody showed up with a convenient story and questionable motives. But that didn't stop Zan from being bitter.

Zan grinned, feeling a bit of his chilly irritation creeping in to the expression despite his best attempts to keep calm. "It's better like this for me anyway; it'll be a thousand times easier to do my job if I don't have some… straight-A, goody-two-shoes, teen-dream type following me around."

Zan glanced up, wondering if he'd offended her with that last comment, but Beth just shook her head and grinned softly.

"You're so full of shit, Zan."

His face twisted as he formed an appropriately scathing reply, but she'd already vanished again, leaving him alone in the back of his stolen van with a pile of clothes and a deceptively heavy, quarter sized ball of compact trash.

* * *

Alex was going out of his mind.

Things had changed for him when he'd gone to Sweden. He'd gotten away from Roswell and the geek image that had defined him for as long as he could remember. He'd seen beautiful places, met new people, and fallen in love. For the first time, he'd seen just how big the world really was and how many options he had for his future.

And, amazingly, he'd finally given up on Isabel Evans.

Oh, it wasn't that he didn't still think she was beautiful, or smart, or – well, just amazing in general. He _did_. But he'd also found out that she wasn't the _only _girl on the planet he could fall for, and he didn't need to spend forever pining over her like a moron when there were girls just as perfect who were more than willing to give him a chance.

_01101 01110 _(1)_  
_

Besides which, he'd spent a lot of time thinking about it, and he'd realized –

_01000 10011 10010 01101 01110 10011 10011 10001 10100 00100 _(2)

– that he was holding her back. Isabel was an _alien princess_, and she was going to go places and do things and be involved in situations he couldn't even dream of. And even though it had hurt at first, Alex had come to realize that that was okay. Just because he wasn't going to be a part of this grand, inter-planetary drama playing out in Roswell didn't mean he didn't have his own future to look forward to.

And there were so many options. He could be the front man for some huge corporation and have them pay for him to travel to exotic locations. He could get an anthropological degree and go excavate ancient burial grounds in Europe or discover some new kind of pottery in Peru. He could even get serious about his music and go on tours somewhere – anywhere that wasn't Roswell…

Alex frowned.

Since when had it been so important for him to leave Roswell?

_10011 00100 10010 10010 00011 01000 00011 10011 00111 01000 10010_ (3)

Alex shook his head. It was normal for teenagers to want to leave home and see the world. He didn't know why it'd seemed so strange at first, but there was nothing wrong with wanting to leave the nest, right?

_01011 01000 00100 10010 _(4)

But then Isabel knocked on his window in the middle of the night, and all of a sudden Alex found himself asking her to prom. And for all of twenty minutes after, he'd had to fight this strange, sick feeling in his stomach. Then he'd reminded himself that it was a strictly platonic thing – her last chance at a prom, and he was somebody she could go with that she knew, that she cared about. She was just asking him – as a friend – to make this prom perfect for her. And he could do that.

The sick feeling had gone away then, and hadn't come back until they'd been standing on the dance floor and Isabel Evans – the girl he'd been in love with as long as he could remember – had leaned up and kissed him.

Suddenly, it was like he was being pulled around by strings that nobody but him could see. The calm, confident guy he'd become reacted smoothly, leaning in and kissing her back as if it wasn't any big deal. But it was as if he'd lost control of his body, as if something in his head was screaming and shaking and flipping out and somehow it wasn't even making his hands twitch. Internally, he was a mess, but absolutely none of it showed. He talked, and he was casual and confident, but he couldn't ignore the feeling that _it/them/she/he was _lying_._

Isabel… nothing was going to happen between them. He'd _known_ that on some deep level since the day he'd gone to Sweden. But something _was _happening. And it should've been simple, it should've been the easiest thing in the world to accept – to be _happy_ to accept – that he'd just been wrong. That good things _could _happen, that a guy like him could actually get a girl like Isabel.

But…

But _it couldn't happen_.

It broke the rules, it called attention to the static, unmoving thing inside his mind that he couldn't ever seem to look at straight. And it _hurt_ to look, to _see _that thing sitting, lying in wait. It made the itch something agonizing, something excruciating. He wanted to bash his head on the wall until the world went black, or until Isabel came and wrapped him in her arms and, somehow, made it all better.

_But I'm happy. A changed man_.

And even though he shouted, clawed, _screamed_ for someone – _anyone_ – to come and see what was happening, it was like a whole other version of himself was still in control. He looked down at Isabel, eyes fixating on the glow on her cheeks and the way kissing her made her lips swell and her smile turn pouty and sensual, and his fingers rose up and traced the curve of her cheek, and his hand was steady as stone. That seemed so strange to him, trapped inside his mind, that he could be going through so much and _not show any of it._

How could this be possible? What was happening to him? How did –

_I'm happy. A changed man._

Alex blinked.

_I'm happy. I went to Sweden. _

Alex smiled, allowing his palm to settle over her jaw, thumb sliding back and forth along her cheekbone. She smiled up at him, and for once he could read everything she was feeling on her face. Attraction. Excitement. And – a first when it came to expressions he'd seen on the resident Ice Queen – pure, genuine contentment.

It was a good look for her.

Alex's smile broadened and softened, and he leaned down to kiss –

_I don't need Isabel anymore; I have Leanna._

Alex froze.

_I miss Leanna. I love Leanna. _

_ I don't need Isabel. _

_ I don't need - _

"Yes, I do." He whispered, grabbing a hold of that voice and shoving it down, down deeper than thought and doubt and instinct. Some part of him knew that wouldn't be enough – that that voice would only grow until it hit his throat and threw itself into the world. It would be back.

But not tonight.

"Alex…" wide, worried brown eyes stared up at him, and Alex blinked. Something had caught his attention, he knew, but he couldn't remember what it was anymore. He was sure it had been important. He knew it was something, something he needed to be worried about –

"Are you okay?"

She cocked her head to the side, and some golden curls slipped down and caught on the curve of her shoulder. Alex's eyes caught on that and followed it back up to her face – the face that, in his more dramatic moments, he'd compared to that of an angel.

Alex smiled and let his body relax.

Whatever it was, it didn't matter.

"I'm perfect," he said with a grin, and leaned down to press his lips against hers. Maybe he'd loved Leanna, and maybe he hadn't. To be honest, he couldn't really remember.

But this… this moment, this _girl_…

This was what he'd been waiting for since the first time he'd ever seen her.

And right now, there was nothing more important to him than to be here, holding her.

Quietly, the first of many stitches holding the shattered remnants of his mind together popped open. Alex, wrapped up in the heart-pounding experience of finally kissing the woman he'd loved as long as he could remember – Alex, who was sheltered by the lies his world was built on, didn't notice the added strain.

Just as he hadn't noticed the scars from where it'd happened before.

* * *

At some point, some of Isabel's old friends wandered up to start a conversation. Alex took advantage of the awkwardness of it all to give Isabel a quick kiss and a be-right-back before he headed towards the bathrooms.

He left the gyms and meandered into the restroom just across the hall. Some guy Alex vaguely recognized from History pushed past him as he came in, rubbing wet hands on his tux pants, but a quick glance told him there was nobody else in the room.

_Perfect._

Still wearing his tux, Alex turned his head up to the ceiling and grinned.

"I kissed _Isabel Evans._" Alex muttered fervently. It unleashed an embarrassingly unmanly wave of giddiness, and before he could talk himself out of it he spun on his heel and pulled a couple of his best dance moves. When he'd finished, he spun in a sharp circle, threw both arms out to the sides, and then bowed to his own reflection. "Yes, yes, I know. I'm amazing."

The teen made his way toward the sinks and flipped on the faucet. He turned it all the way to cold and splashed some on his face to cool off. As he was blinking the frigid water out of his eyes, he heard the door swing open. He glanced over and smiled.

"Oh, hey, Max." He greeted, then frowned. His vision was still blurry, but he could see enough to know the colors were all wrong. "Did you change or w-"

He blinked, and the image cleared.

_… That's not Max._

The panic hit then (_Skins, shapeshifters, jeeze, gonna die a virgin_) and he took a few steps backward and grinned. _Play along, play along; pretend you haven't noticed_. "Uh, you know – I like that jacket better. You know, with the _leather_ and the… the buttons. Very hip. Um. I have to go – told Isabel I'd be back, you know, places to be –"

"Believe it or not, dude," the guy muttered roughly, his New York accent doing little to hide the familiarity of his voice. Unfortunately, Alex wasn't exactly in the right mental state to point a finger at _where_, exactly, he'd heard that accent before. "I'm here to help you."

His experiences with mysterious New Yorkers having been pretty much all negative, Alex snorted, then tried to cover it up with a nod and shaky smile. "Yeah, yeah – of course. Duh. Why wouldn't you be, right? I'm just going to go this way and –".

The guy muttered something in a disgusted tone and, with a soft flash of light, Alex felt something snap his arm and legs in place at his sides.

At that point, Alex started feeling genuinely terrified.

The guy walked toward Alex and wrapped a gentle hand around his forehead. Alex blinked and muttered something vaguely hysterical about getting his temperature checked in this situation, but the mumble didn't make it passed the hand.

"Sorry, dude, but this is probably gonna hurt."

The hand on his forehead gave off a sudden wave of heat, and then his mind imploded.

* * *

Sliding down those bowling lanes in her socks, Liz had the strangest feeling of déjà-vu. She'd been having that feeling a lot lately, actually, and over the stupidest things. When she'd invited Max to the prom, when Sean had kissed her…

When Max had kissed Tess.

Liz shook her head, pushing that memory aside. Not that she really could, though – that image was _seared_ into her retinas in the way only looking at the sun or seeing your parents in awkward situations could do. It was just so _wrong_, so… so _not _what should've happened.

_He said he loved me. That he didn't care about Tess._

Only, he'd said that before Future-Max had landed on her balcony and helped her sabotage their relationship. And judging by that… by what she'd seen the two of them _doing_, his feelings on the subject had obviously changed.

Of course, it wasn't like she hadn't known they were going to get together. Future-Max had told her as much when he'd been describing why the future had gone to hell. But the actual words he'd used were that him and Liz being "close" had chased Tess off, and that she needed to help him fall out of love with her in order to keep the Royal Four whole. He'd never actually said, word for word, that he and Tess would be… would be…

Liz shook her head and took another run towards the bowling pins, letting her anger fuel her feet and bleed off into the waxed wood. It was weird how light she felt, gliding along on her socks – just like Sean had told her she would. It was almost like dancing, or even a little like flying, maybe. Like she could just take off and go on forever.

It was stupid, but some part of her had actually believed that some day, she and Max would get back together. That Max had been right when he'd said they would chose their own destinies.

But he wasn't right.

_He really is going to end up with Tess, isn't he?_

Liz blinked away the building tears and suddenly lost her footing. She fell on her butt with a harmless little _thud_. Anywhere else, that would've been the end of it, but the wax on the lane and her own momentum kept her sliding, spinning down the alley on her bottom.

She caught one glance at Sean's muffled grin as she spun in another circle and she burst in to laughter. _God, I should've done this years ago. This is so fun_.

More fun than she'd had in months, actually.

Liz laughed so hard she fell over backwards, finally coming to a stop near the end of the lane. Sean's grinning face popped into view, and Liz smiled, forgetting dark thoughts as he grabbed her arms and dragged her backwards on the bowling lane. She shrieked with shocked laughter and barely swallowed back a half-hearted protest about her dress.

_Screw the dress_. She was never wearing it again anyways.

After a while, she broke away from Sean for a moment to go buy a pepsi from the vending machine. In the almost-quiet as she sorted through some quarters, Alex's face floated in to her head. Liz blinked and frowned, then shoved the odd worry aside. Alex was fine, obviously. He was at prom with Isabel, _finally _getting a shot at having a romantic relationship with the blonde beauty.

What could possibly be wrong?

* * *

**AN:** Okay, so. In the past, I've worded things dramatically, and some of you guys have assumed I meant people were dying. That's almost never the case - I don't like killing off characters because you can almost always find a way to use them to make things more complicated. I will do it, but I really, really try not to.

Having said that, I'd like to point out that Alex is NOT DEAD. The whole 'mind imploding' thing is a metaphor, used to describe the fact that the structures Tess has used to control him are all collapsing. Also, in case I use these again, Zan is a 'twice dead king' cause he's died twice, original characters are not Skins unless I actually call them Skins, and people who get their heads bashed do not _necessarily_ die. They may, but sometimes they're just unconscious, and I'll try to specify from here on out when I mean one and when I mean the other.

Hope that helps. (:

(1) _NO._

(2) _ITSNOTTRU__E._

(3) _TESSDIDTHIS__._

(4) _LIES._

Review!


	3. Chapter 3: Healing

**Summary**: Liz did what she came to do; she went back into the past and saved Zan. But Zan is nothing if not dangerous, and every action he makes creates a ripple effect that will change the world Liz knew beyond all recognition. It's a new timeline, but does that really mean it will be a better one?

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Liz Parker, Zan, or any of the other characters or places of the TV show (and book series) Roswell.

**AN**: Ugh, sorry this took so long. Anyway - I know it's not the meeting you guys all want, but that'll be coming up in the next couple chapters, and I had to set up a foundation for where I'm going with Alex, Liz, and Alex and Max's relationship (there will be some manly bonding of the non-slash persuasion, just fyi).

Enjoy!

* * *

The memories rushed back like a tidal wave, leaving the walls that had protected and caged him for so long in total ruin.

Alex's knees buckled. A second later he hit the floor, his cheekbone flaring with the impact as the skin of his face stuck to the cheap linoleum. But nothing about it registered – not the pain or the awkward squeaking sound as his head slid underneath a sink. He felt nothing, saw nothing… nothing but the memories.

_Tess had given him the slides, already made, and had him watch them. _

_ He'd felt the fake scenes as she'd sent them to him; he'd watched and felt and _breathed _them in that moment, and he'd believed. Even though he'd done nothing but sit in a chair and watch a slideshow, he believed he was there, and living the story she'd forced down his throat. _

_ He lived the entire trip in five minutes. _

Alex gasped, dropping his forehead to the floor and panting as his head swam and his stomach clenched.

_Leanna… You love Leanna. She's so much better for you than Isabel. _

_ The blonde she called Leanna was standing right in front of Alex, blank eyed and doll-like in her emptiness. Whoever she was, she wasn't home right now – Tess had sent her away, and called down a character she'd created in her place. _

_ Leanna stood beside him, wrapped her arm around his middle, and smiled big. A smile just like hers stretched across his face, and for a second the two of them – posed carefully in front of a wall Tess had altered to look like one of the places on her slides – looked exactly like the loving couple he _believed they were.

_ Tess was standing right behind them, and although she hadn't said a word, he could feel her in his mind. Every word she sent to him imprinted itself, dug into the brain matter and took up watch for thoughts that should not be. _

_ You're happy. You're confident. You're a whole new man now, Alex. _

He couldn't breathe; there was no air between him and the tile at all, so Alex shoved himself off of his stomach onto his back. He hoped it would make his lungs stop burning and his chest stop squeezing. It didn't.

_You want to travel the world someday, don't you? See beautiful places like Sweden again. There's nothing for you here with Isabel. You don't need her anymore; you have Leanna. _

But he hadn't had Leanna, had he? He'd never really gone to Sweden. He'd never seen the Aurora Borealis or fallen in love in a foreign country. He'd never tried those foods, or drank Swedish alcohol, or stayed up all night laughing until he cried with his host-brother.

Five minutes of slides, that's all it was.

Lies. Everything was a lie. All of it…

She'd _lied_ to him! Made him into a liar, made his world into one giant, ridiculous joke –

_"I don't know what I'm doing!" He'd said, hands pulling at his hair and his eyes rimmed in dark circles. His first time breaking, and Tess looked almost as scared as he did. "I don't know why I'm here! What am I doing, Tess? What are you doing to me?"_

_ She'd shaken her head, crying and grabbing his wrists. "It's alright, Alex. It's okay! I just have to fix this – I can fix this!" _

_ And then she reached inside of him and _twisted_. _

Alex sobbed, hands coming up to clench at his hair, unknowingly recreating the insanity he'd shown in that moment. His feet pushed against the carpet, sliding and rocking his body from side to side. His hands left his head and searched for something, anything to grip, and when his palm hit the cool tiles of the wall, he dug into the grout with his fingernails.

_Lies lies lies lies lies… _

_ Why does everything have to be a lie? _

Alex didn't feel the cold, didn't experience the disgust he would have usually felt at lying on the floor in a public bathroom, didn't feel the way the side of his face still throbbed from when he hit the floor.

All he could feel was the itch in his skull and the whirlwind in his mind.

_Another time breaking – in the big computer room, less stable now but angrier too. _

_ "You can't do this to me!" He hissed, crowding her body against the corner and wanting – more than anything – to _make her **hurt**._ "You witch, you – you can't _do_ this! They'll find out!" _

_ "No." Tess muttered, tilting her head up to catch his eye. Her eyebrows were furrowed, her lips curled down. As if she felt guilty. As if she were capable of feeling _anything_, the heartless, manipulative bitch that she was. "They won't. I'm sorry, Alex, but I can't let that happen." _

_ And again, the pieces of him she'd ripped and moved around shifted until they fit what she wanted, and again, she patched him up. She made his mind into her special, patchwork canvas, each time stitched tighter than the last, and Alex had no way to stop it. No way to fight back._

_ In the haze afterwards, he hadn't really registered her talking. _

_ "I'm so sorry, Alex. But I have to do this!" _

Alex kicked and screamed through clenched teeth, his foot catching solid and throbbing.

_Why does everything have to be so wrong?_

Moments (a _lifetime_) ago, Alex had been happy. Blissful and ignorant and totally ecstatic to have kissed the girl of his dreams.

But now his eyes were open.

"How could she do this to me?" He hissed, tears running down his face. His head was still throbbing and his stomach still swayed, but he barely registered any of it over the feeling of sudden, blessed emptiness inside his skull. "How could… how can anyone treat a living person like that?"

He wasn't really Alex anymore. She'd pulled him apart and remade him, hidden him under a mask of _nothing-to-see-here_. And when he'd finally pulled free, when he'd finally remembered all she'd done to him and all she'd made him do, he was… changed. The pieces were all in new places, and for the first time since she'd first touched his mind, he had no idea who he was anymore. The old Alex had been optimistic, always thinking about what life would be like when he was older, or smarter, or more confidant. Tess's Alex had been mindlessly content, sure in the knowledge that whatever came, he'd make it work - he would be _happy_.

But Alex didn't feel any of that now.

He felt empty of anything positive, and what was left was so powerful and strange that it almost seemed like something separate from him. Something _animal_. Righteous fury, wild hatred.

And fear.

Oh, god, the _fear._

Alex brought his hands up to his face and dug his fingernails into the skin, pulling downwards, caught in the irrational belief that he could pull it free_._

"Fuck!" Somebody grabbed his wrists and pulled back, and Alex – never the buffest boy in gym class – couldn't pull them free. "The hell you think you're doin', huh?"

Alex tried to pull free, but for the first time he got a good look at his attacker's – savior's? – face, and the recognition stole the breath from his lungs.

"… Max?"

The guy above him – longer haired than Max, with a silver stud glittering in one eyebrow – grinned. "Nope. The name's Zan. Would say nice meeting you, but… well, I gotta say, you're kinda freaking me out right now, Al."

The name _Zan_ took a minute to register, and it took Alex a few more to remember why it was so familiar. When he did, his eyes widened and his feet fought to push his body backwards. The guy crouched over him – Zan – didn't try to stop him, but just slid backwards and away from Alex until the bigger guy was sitting against the wall by the door.

"But, you – Ava told us…" Alex whispered. Then, almost accusingly, "You're supposed to be dead."

Zan's eyes flashed, and then he shrugged. "Yeah, well, that makes two of us."

"I'm –" Alex stuttered. "E-excuse me?"

Zan smirked, relaxing against the bed with the kind of forced casualness Alex very clearly remembered in Isabel's double. Of course, on her it had looked more believable and even a little endearing (or it had been, until he'd found out she was a psycho who was trying to kill his friend), but seeing it at all made him a little nervous. After all, Lonnie and Rath had both turned out to be liars who only looked so nervous 'cause they'd killed one of their own and were only pretending to be friendly, right?

But Zan _was _the one they killed. So did that make it more or less rational?

"If I hadn't bust in when I did, you'd be dead in a month. Tops. And that's if the bitch didn't mind-wipe you again."

Alex froze, and deep in his chest his heart squeezed hard.

"H-how…?"

"That thing she was doin' to your head." Zan explained, pulling a flask or something out of the pocket of his black trench-coat and unscrewing the lid. He took a big sip of it and sighed. "It fucks up your brain after a while. Kinda like putting too much air in a balloon, y'know? After a while… _pop_."

Which... actually wasn't the question Alex had been wanting to ask at all. _How'd you know I'd been mindwiped?_ had actually been his first thought, seeing as how that whole 'you would've died' thing hadn't really hit him yet. But now, he imagined a red balloon growing and growing and growing, until the skin was translucent as glass and everything behind it took on a bloody-hue. One more breath of air pushed inside and it popped, streaming gore and brain matter all over the walls.

Alex shuddered, putting a hand to his head as if he could feel it expanding. His nails dug into his scalp, scratching, scratching, scratching – poke a hole to let out some air, get rid of the pressure –

Alex froze.

Only, there wasn't any pressure anymore, was there? The itch he'd been scratching – and somehow ignoring – for months was just… gone.

Zan slapped his hand away. Alex hadn't even seen him move, but now his face was inches away from Alex's, expression almost livid. "Cut it out! The hell is wrong with you, man?"

"You don't understand!" Alex said, the anger and insane frustration of a moment before snapping back. He grabbed the collar of Zan's shirt and shook the boy for all he was worth. He probably wouldn't have been able to do it if Zan had been expecting it, but judging by the wide eyes and slightly gaping mouth, he hadn't been. "It was all a lie – Leanna, me going to Sweden, everything. She made me think it happened just so I wouldn't tell anybody the truth about that _stupid book_!"

Alex felt the words fall into order in his mind, and he shoved himself to his feet, knocking Zan on his butt without noticing. Alex headed straight toward the door, mumbling as he went. "I have to tell them. They have to know what she did –"

The door slammed shut in front of him.

Alex turned back to see Zan slowly picking himself up off the floor, dark eyes blank and locked on him. "What're you _doing_?" Alex hissed. "Why are you stopping me? I have to tell them –"

"And then what, genius?" Zan snapped. "You and your band of merry men go and confront the wicked witch? What's to stop her from doing it again, huh? From mind-fucking not just you, but all your soft-hearted, cornball little friends?"

Alex blinked. For a moment, the words didn't actually register, and all he could think was, _You are seriously messing up your metaphors, dude. _Then the words seemed to settle in his brain, the idea hitting him hard on all kinds of levels and robbing him of what little levity he'd found. He shook his head, suddenly furious at the alien for suggesting it. "Better than sitting back without letting my friends know what they're dealing with! And besides, that's _not _going to happen. I'll tell them to be careful."

"Oh,_ right_." Zan snorted. "She ain't gonna mind-wipe 'em cause they're going to _carefully _try and get rid of her. Not like she'll notice them _nonchalantly_ stuffing her on a plane to Antartica, right?"

Alex glared. "You have a better idea, jerk?"

"Yup." Zan tossed him a dry look, then crossed his arms. "You don't let on you remember, and we wait. Then –"

"So... she's just going to get away with it?" Alex muttered, betrayal and anger and fear resurfacing in the pit of his stomach, black and viscous and _writhing_. "No. No _way_, it's not happening! I'm not just going to forget and forgive her for this, for – _god_, after what she did–"

"I didn't say you would, dude."

Alex looked back at Zan, who was now looking a little annoyed. "Look, I get it, aight? You got mind fucked, and trust me – I know exactly how it feels to think shit is one way and have everything turn out to be a fucking lie."

Zan stopped, looked down at the floor, and clenched his jaw. Alex kept quiet, not having to think very hard to realize this was probably a pretty painful subject.

Zan looked back up at him, eyes distant but focused. "But somebody helped me out then, and she taught me sometimes you have to do shit the smart way, and not the way that feels like it would be the most satisfying, y'know?

"I know you wanna just walk up to her and end this, to make her take back what she did to you or whatever, but it _isn't gonna work_. Trust me on this, man; if she was willing to just give up on this shit the minute she got called out on it, she never would've gone this far. Once you've done this much fucked-up shit to somebody, there's no making it better – and she _knows _that. The only way she gets out of this without getting her ass _lynched_ is to keep it quiet. To keep _you _quiet, and to make sure nobody ever remembers anything you have to say."

Alex swallowed and looked away.

The times he'd broken – the times his memories had come back and he'd confronted her about it… hadn't she pretty much done exactly what Zan was implying? Even though she'd seen how much she was hurting him, even though she knew he was in pain, hadn't she just rushed to cover it all up and go back to what she was doing? Hadn't she told him, _straight to his face_, that she could never let the others find out what she'd done?

Alex sighed, and it was like all of his energy – all of his _conviction _– just flowed out of him with the carbon dioxide. He spoke, and his voice was listless. "So what? What else am I supposed to do?"

Zan watched him for a second, and the annoyance had been replaced by a kind of empathy Alex wasn't sure he welcomed. Cause, sure – it sucked to feel this way, it sucked to be so completely beaten and angry and not have any way to respond, and it sucked even worse to do it alone. But he didn't _know _Zan, and having this stranger here, butting in on the most painful moment of Alex's life when _none _of his friends could be allowed to know that he was even hurting…

But, at the same time, Zan was the one that had _stopped _it, and that had to count for something, right?

"You wait, and you pretend you don't remember anything." Zan finally said, voice quiet and calm. Alex would've glared, but he'd kind of already said that, so it wasn't exactly surprising. "And you let me handle it."

_That_… Alex hadn't been expecting.

"You?" Alex said, the disbelief in his tone only half-hidden. "What can you do that my friends can't? What's to stop her from mind-wiping _you_?"

Zan smirked and shrugged. "I'm workin' on it."

"_That's_ encouraging." Alex said, the sarcasm more automatic than biting.

"Don't worry about it, man." Zan's smirk eased into a smile, and he pushed himself up to his feet. "I've got a lil' experience fighting other aliens, y'know? Plus, I got a lot more training then your crew does. I can handle it – it'll just… take me some time."

Alex's gaze turned skeptical. "… How much time, exactly?"

"Oh, y'know…" Zan shrugged, slouching against the door and crossing his arms over his chest, looking for all the world like he was totally relaxed. "Enough time to get a read on where she's at on the whole alien power scale or whatever and make sure I'm strong enough to do what I have to. Shouldn't be too long."

"And in the mean time?" Alex said sharply, frustrated that something that was still clawing at the inside of his brain could be treated so casually by anyone. "She just walks around, free, nobody knowing what she did?"

Zan pushed off of the door and stood up to his full height, and his face was harder and more stoic than it had been since the first time Alex looked up at him. Instinctively, Alex reacted, standing a little straighter and expression losing some of the defiance. "Yes, Alex. That's exactly what's going to happen, because if it doesn't, if she finds out anybody knows what she's done, her very first move is going to be to dig into our heads and bury it in as deep a layer of bullshit as she can manage. And then she's going to do it to your friends, who may or may not have been wiped before, maybe even more than once – which could put them right in the place you just were, literally feet away from fucking death. Only nobody will be there to heal them, cause I'm either gonna be dead or in the same boat as they are."

Alex went white, blood draining from his face and knees going a little watery beneath him. Deep in his mind, he was pretty sure Zan was intentionally laying it on thick to make a point – but after Alex's experience he had more than enough fear of Tess and her abilities to realize what Zan was saying was completely possible. In his mind, it even seemed likely – after everything she'd done to him, he didn't really believe she had any kind of moral limit.

"The only way to be sure she isn't gonna pull that shit is to let her think everything's going just the way she wants it to – at least on the whole you-went-to-Switzerland front. Which means you have to play it cool until we're sure we can take her on and _win._" Zan walked slowly towards Alex as he was talking, getting close enough to lock a stern glare on the skinny boy, even in the dark. "Can you do that? Cause if you can't, we're gonna have to think up a reason for you to get out of town for a while, because if you flip your shit and give this away _no one _is gonna know enough of the truth to stop her."

The idea of running away and leaving his still-clueless friends to the sharks left him feeling mildly disgusted, and his instinct was to spout off an immediate 'no'. But then an image of Tess's face flashed through his mind, and he felt his mouth go dry and his hands begin to shake. He wanted to run, to hide, to wrap both hands around her neck and _squeeze_… the urge to do _something_ to the evil bitch was so strong he almost couldn't breathe. And instantly Alex knew that – at least for now – there was no way he could get face-to-face with her without doing… well, even he wasn't sure what he'd do.

But she would know immediately that he knew what she'd done.

Alex clenched his teeth, and the shaking in his hands tapered off even as the pounding in his head went totally, unnaturally still. He opened his eyes again and frowned at Zan, who was looking back at Alex with surprise.

"I can't… I can't hide it. But I'm not running, either." Alex said steadily. Then he let the smile fade and glared at Zan, even though Alex knew from Zan's expression and from a number of comments in his past that he just couldn't pull off intimidation. It didn't matter, really; it was a sign that meant he was dead serious about something, and he wanted Zan to know it too. "These are _my _friends, Zan. Whatever you're doing… I want in on it."

Zan stared for a second, looking less than impressed. Then he smiled ruefully and turned toward the window again. "Whatever, man. Your funeral."

Alex winced, struck by the poor choice in wording. As Zan slipped through the window (which had apparently been open the whole time, though Alex hadn't noticed) and gestured at the skinny teen to follow, Alex called out, "And don't call me Al!"

* * *

Liz kept her eyes on her homework and thought about Max.

After seeing him kiss Tess at the Prom the night before, Liz had kind of broken down. Her trip to the bowling alley with Sean had helped her to calm down a lot, though, and had given her time to finally face up to some things; like the fact that Max and Tess were now together, and Liz and Max definitely were _not_.

She'd spent so long dwelling in grief and kind of desperate _need _to get him back, that she hadn't actually dealt with her anger at first. Deep down, she'd blamed him for everything – not just kissing Tess or being so angry at her for having sex she didn't actually have with Kyle – but for the fact that she'd had to do it at all.

After all, he was the one that had _told her _to do it in the first place. Well, not him, Future Max; but in a way they were the same person, and she couldn't mentally hold them separate. And yeah, it wasn't really Max's fault, and he'd had no way to know the truth when she's spent so long stuffing lies down his throat, but she'd still resented him on some level for _believing_ her, for letting go of the connection she hadn't been allowed to hold onto.

Even though the rational part of her had known that, and tried over and over again to remind the less rational side of her, she had still been really angry with him. Because she'd still _felt_, deep down, like they were together. Because that whole night with Kyle had been make-believe for her, and even their break-up had felt kind of like a lie. Sean kissing Liz - and her kissing him back, just a little - had been the first crack in the foundation of her denial.

But seeing Max kissing Tess blown that wall to pieces.

And she'd tossed her flowers in the trash and spent the whole, painful walk to the bowling alley spewing venom into the empty air, finally letting herself vent the poisonous anger that had been eating at her, deep down, for _so long_.

It'd hurt to realize they really _weren't _going to be getting back together, but it had been almost a relief, too. It meant she could start to let go of all the tension that came from being afraid all the time - afraid she'd mess up and push him further away, afraid she wouldn't and somehow their being together would be a catastrophic mistake. For the first time since she'd spoken with Future-Max, she could actually _relax_.

She felt better now, and for the first time… for the first time she felt like maybe she could start to move on. She hadn't lied when she'd told Future-Max that he would always be the love of her life, but that didn't mean she couldn't ever love _again_. People did it all the time.

When they'd all met up the next night at the Crashdown so that Maria, Isabel, and Tess could go through the photo's they'd taken at Prom, Liz had been able to look at Max, smile genuinely, and say "hello" without worrying that he'd see something in her face he shouldn't see. She turned and smiled at Tess, too, and when the little blonde stepped forward next to Zan, Liz didn't imagine punching her in the nose or ripping her hair out. In fact, she even wondered to herself if now they could learn to be friends.

That now familiar feeling of deja-vu came again, and Liz felt her stomach roil against the idea.

Okay, so maybe not _friends..._

Isabel said something to Kyle and Tess over the booth to Liz's left, and the other two burst into snickers. Liz glanced up at them and rolled her eyes. She went back to her homework quickly, the little smile on her face the only hint at how light she felt.

From the other side of the room she heard the sound of a lot of glass breaking. Liz jumped and looked across the room where Maria – also still in full work uniform – had dropped an entire stack full of dirty plates on the floor. A grumbled "great" floated across the room as the irritated blonde stormed off to grab a bucket from behind the counter.

"You are so full of it," Max said fervently to Michael.

Michael, looking much more relaxed, only shrugged. "I just call it like I see it."

"You can't compare The Matrix to Crouching Tiger." Max said, face twisted in disgust. Liz looked away because… well, she didn't really feel like watching him. In fact, for the first time in forever, she didn't feel the need to take advantage of his distraction to ogle wistfully in his direction. She jotted down the next problem from the book and bit her lip, trying to focus on the answer.

"Crapping Tiger is a chick flick with Kung Fu." Michael's voice floated across the room. Liz snorted quietly, then blushed a little at how unattractive the noise had been. Luckily, everyone was too caught up in their respective conversations to care.

"First of all, Crapp – …" Max paused, then carefully corrected himself. "_Crouching _Tiger is actually _about_ something. Love, honor, duty."

"The Matrix is about something." Michael replied immediately, stubborn. "Illusion, reality, gunfire."

"You simply _cannot _prefer Keanu Reeves to Michelle Yo. You can't." Max said sharply, and Liz saw him lean back out of the corner of her eye. She glared at the paper, forcing herself to think through the answer. It only took a second, and she was writing it down even as she heard Max finish his dramatic rant, voice actually breaking a little. "I won't _let_ you."

Reluctantly amused, Liz smirked.

Liz put the next problem through her calculator, absently noting Maria bringing the bucket of broken dish-shards past her and into the kitchen. Liz scribbled down the formula's she'd used, plugging in the numbers she'd gotten at the same time.

Math wasn't usually her strong point, but ironically, emotional stress seemed to actually help her to –

_**"No!"** _

The agonized shriek had Liz spinning around to face the kitchen, her wrist hitting the calculator and sending it flying to the floor. The room went silent, and Liz could hear the sound of the water faucet turning on on the other side of the wall. But no screaming. No terrified Maria bursting out of the kitchen.

"Liz?" Tess asked from where she was sitting in the booth next to Liz's table. "You okay?"

Liz blinked, looking around the room at all the concerned faces staring back at her. It was pretty obvious she'd been the only one to hear it. Feeling stupid, Liz tossed a weak smile towards the booth and stood up. "I'm fine, I just… I'll be right back."

She hurried into the kitchen, leaving the quiet room behind. Maria was just where she should be; standing over the sink washing her hands, the pile of glass just barely visible from the trash can in the corner.

"Liz, why am I the _only one_ cleaning here?" Maria huffed without looking up. "I mean, I get that you're trying desperately to distract yourself from the whole Max situation, but there _are _five other people in that room, you know? I just don't understand why –"

"Is everything okay?" Liz blurted. Everything looked fine, but every instinct in her body was still thrumming with the feeling that it _wasn't _okay. That things should be horrible right now – that something… something was _supposed _to be wrong.

Terribly, world-shakingly wrong.

Maria looked up at her and blinked. "Yeah, of course. Are _you _okay? You are _really_ white right now. Like, _ghostly_ white."

Liz took a deep breath and forced herself to relax, smiling kind of shakily at her best friend. "Yeah, I'm fine. I just… I could've sworn something was happening back here. I just had this really strong feeling all of a sudden –"

The back door opened with a slow creek.

Liz jumped. Maria yelped, grabbing Liz's wrist and pulling her in close.

Alex's face poked in through the gap.

"Oh, hey guys." Alex said, voice hushed. "I was hoping you'd be in here."

"Don't _do _that!" Maria hissed.

Alex blinked. "Don't do what?"

"Open the door like that!" She snapped. "It's… _creepy_."

Alex glanced at the door for a second, then shook his head. "Okay, let's just move past the creepiness of how I open doors for a minute. I've got to talk to you two."

"Are you okay?" Liz cut in quietly, searching his face. They'd seen him less than twelve hours ago, but it might as well have been months. He was pale, and there were deep, dark circles under his eyes – which were a lot more red than they'd been when she'd last seen him at prom. She didn't know how it'd happened, but it looked like he hadn't slept in days.

Suddenly, she regretted listening to him when he said on the phone that he was too busy for a visit.

Alex stared at her for a moment and smiled. It was a small, tired smile, but it was real, and it went a long way to settling the worry Liz hadn't even realized she was feeling. "Yeah, Liz, I'm… I'm okay. Really."

Another moment of silence passed before Maria spoke, and when she did the solemn tone of her voice proved she'd noticed what Liz had about their friend. "What's going on, Alex?"

He took a deep breath and shrugged. "A relative of my mom's just died, and I'm going to head up to Utah for a few days for the funeral. I wondered if maybe you guys would tell everybody I said goodbye."

They stared.

"Since when do you have relatives in Utah?" Maria asked dubiously.

"Said goodbye…?" Liz muttered at the same time.

Alex glared weakly at Maria, "It's my mother's ex-brother-in-law, okay? Never met the guy, but it's… It's just one of those family things. I can't just _not _go."

"Why can't you tell them goodbye yourself?" Liz asked, stepping toward the door to the restaurant portion of the Crashdown. "Everybody's right out –"

"I can't." Alex said sharply.

Liz froze. She and Maria stared at Alex, noting again the exhaustion on his face.

Alex sighed, then smiled. It was obviously forced, and more than anything else that had happened, that told Liz and Maria something was wrong. "I'm in kind of a hurry right now, and I don't want to go through the whole long goodbye thing. Just tell them I'll be back in a few days – a week tops. Okay?"

"Alex…" Maria muttered quietly, eyes focused and intense. "Are you sure you're okay?"

He grinned. "I'm fine. But I have to go now, so –"

Liz moved on instinct, and in just a second she pulled him into a hug. He hesitated briefly, then hugged her back. He was subtly shaking, and the worry in her chest that had almost disappeared when she saw him came back. "Alex, if you're in some kind of trouble, we can help."

He froze, chest going still as his breath caught. And then, so quickly she might have thought she'd imagined it under different circumstances, he relaxed again. "I'm not in trouble, Liz. I just have some stuff to get done."

He pulled back, smiling down at her and then at Maria, who reached in to hug him, too.

"I'll see you guys in a couple days, alright?"

The doors to the Crashdown opened almost silently, and they turned to see Max standing in the doorway. He looked at Maria and Alex, then over at Liz and back again, concern morphing into something unreadable. "Alex. What happened to you at the Prom yesterday? Isabel was really upset."

Alex shrugged, staring at the floor. "Some things happened and I couldn't get away."

Max blinked, eyes widening just a bit in surprise. His shoulders went rigid, his arms crossed over his chest, and his face went stern; Liz recognized all the signs of him going into King mode and decided she'd better jump in quickly. Unfortunately, the only thing she could think to blurt out was: "Alex was just saying goodbye."

Max tossed a startled look in her direction. "Goodbye?" He asked, leadingly.

Liz blushed and glanced at Alex, wondering whether he would want her to answer or not, but apparently Maria didn't realize it might be a problem. She tossed Max a significant look and crossed her arms, but while the pose had given Max a commanding air, on Maria it was pure, prima-donna attitude. "Alex is heading out of town for a few days. Apparently, his mom's ex-boyfriend died or something." She shrugged and and focused intently on Alex, tactless disapproval in her voice.

"My mother's ex-brother-in-law." Alex corrected with a sigh. "He's my cousin's dad. I only met him, like, once, but we're going as… support. I guess."

"Oh, wow." Max muttered, looking uncomfortable. "I'm… sorry?"

He was obviously _trying _to be sympathetic, but the slight rise in tone at the end proved that he wasn't really sure whether you were supposed to say sorry when a relative you barely knew kicked the bucket.

Alex nodded and turned away, breaking her from her thoughts.

"Wait." Maria said quickly as Alex started to slip out the door. "What about Isabel? Aren't you at least going to say goodbye to her?"

Alex looked toward Max, expression oddly intense. Then he let his eyes unfocus and tossed an empty smile at his friends. "I can't right now. Tell her I'm sorry for me?"

Before they could say anything back, he slipped outside and closed the door behind him.

"Okay, was that just me," Maria finally mumbled, turning a shocked expression toward Liz. "Or was that really, _really _weird?"

Liz shrugged; she wasn't sure how to feel about it. She felt a little worried, but mostly she just felt relieved, although why she felt that she had no idea. She glanced over at Max, but he was still staring at the door, the familiar, vaguely irritated looking expression on his face telling her he was deep in thought.

* * *

**AN:** Review!


	4. Chapter 4: Instigate

**Summary**: Liz did what she came to do; she went back into the past and saved Zan. But Zan is nothing if not dangerous, and every action he makes creates a ripple effect that will change the world Liz knew beyond all recognition. It's a new timeline, but does that really mean it will be a better one?

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Liz Parker, Zan, or any of the other characters or places of the TV show (and book series) Roswell.

**AN**: Sorry this took two months to get out, but I've had absolutely no drive to write lately. I've been pushing myself to do it anyway, though, so I've got a couple chapter worth of rough drafts ready. Updates will still be slow, but I'm not stopping. (:

Oh – also, I figure I should say right from the start that Zan will be… just a bit insulting this chapter. As a disclaimer, his opinions are _not _ my opinions, and at least a little of his confrontational behavior is because of how totally uncomfortable he is with everything that's going on.

Warning: short chapter. Sorry ):

Enjoy.

* * *

Zan had hated almost everything about New Mexico right from the beginning. He hated all the dirt, all the cactus that hid right up until he inevitably kicked it, and the ugly ass sage brush. He hated the tumbleweeds – tumbleweeds, like in a friggin' cowboy flick – and the wide, gapingly empty blue skies. He missed the buildings of New York, the energy and the clustered closeness of it all. He missed the people, no matter how crazy some of them were, and the color and the noise. Out here, there were places where you could literally see the horizon in every direction, and every now and then Zan got the sick feeling that he'd just slide right off the face of the Earth.

But there was one thing, one redeeming factor, that almost made it all worth it. In the day time, with nothing but constant, eye-searing blue above him, that open sky made him feel vulnerable and obvious, open to attack from all directions. But at night, when shadows cradled him and the horizon was just a distant distinction between black and darker black, the whole universe opened up around him.

The further he got in the desert, the farther away from the buildings and the streets of Roswell, the brighter the stars became. He could see the pale white streak of the Milky Way, the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper and Orion – all of which he'd memorized from books, because until he'd left New York with Beth, he'd never really seen the stars.

He walked for almost an hour along the edge of the road in the dark, eyes fixed straight up. On nights like this, he didn't mind the desert or the emptiness. On nights like this, it felt like he was floating in space.

Which, hey, silver lining for not having his van.

Zan sighed, regretting for a moment that he'd decided not to drive back to his new home in the Volvo he'd almost jacked a couple streets from the Sheriff's place. There was no way he was going to keep it though, and no way he was going to leave a stolen car anywhere near where he was staying. If the five-oh here were anything like the cops back in the Big Apple, he would be having more than enough problems with them without adding grand theft auto. Or at least, without being suspected of it.

He let his smirk fade and sighed again. He didn't mind the walking – how could he, after living in New York? – but there was only so much quiet he could take before wanting to scream. At some point in the near future, he was going to have to get a job and buy a car. Walking took way to long when there was nothing but the wind to listen to.

Another fifteen minutes passed in total silence before he saw the freaky looking cactus he'd used to mark his turn. He took it, stepping down into the ditch that had formed from rainwater streaming off the road. It ran down, following a natural valley that curved past a deceptively small mesa. He trudged through, careful not to trip on anything as he rounded the bend. He lost sight of the road just as he spotted the opening to his new place by the light peaking out from behind the rock. In the dark, he could only barely see the lines of an unfamiliar bike propped against the side.

The door – or the opening, rather – was just big enough for Zan to slip through. It opened much wider after that; the perfectly circular shape of it the only real proof it wasn't natural. Against the wall on one side of the man-made cave was Zan's van, gutted to serve as a bedroom, of sorts. Strewn around everywhere else was furniture Zan had scavenged from various places his first few days in town. Light came from a lamp in the corner, which was powered by electricity Zan was stealing directly from the nearby power lines.

In the middle of the room, a skinny teenaged boy paced.

"Yo."

Alex jumped, spinning around so quickly he almost fell over.

Zan snickered. Alex blushed and glared, but quickly regained his composure and muttered, "How'd it go? You find anything?"

Zan looked at the other boy for a second, then reached behind his back and pulled the lock box free from the improvised pocket he'd created to carry it. He mentally removed the lock and tossed it to Alex, then climbed in to the van and laid back on the tiny air mattress he'd found at the dump. It'd taken him all of twenty seconds to clean and patch up once he'd gotten home, and it was insanely comfortable, so he was actually kind of proud of it.

Zan heard the sound of Alex prying the little box open.

After he'd healed Alex in the bathroom, Zan'd been forced to alter his plans a bit. Alex had said he wasn't ready to face Tess, but that he wasn't willing to just leave his friends to face her alone, either. Remembering everything Tess had apparently made him do, Zan had decided to give him some busy work – nothing big, but enough to keep him occupied and out of trouble until Zan could figure out something else to do with him.

He'd told Alex to make up a story to tell his friends and gave the kid directions to Zan's new home/cave. It would at least give Alex a place to stay where Tess wouldn't be.

On the other side of the cave, Alex started riffling through the papers. Zan knew already that most of the stuff in there (apart from the letter the shape shifter had written to the Ava look-alike) was written in Antarian. He'd taken a peek at it when he'd found it at the Sherriff's place – he'd taken advantage of everybody being either at the Crashdown or (in the case of the Sheriff) on patrol to look for through Tess's things. In one of the Journals that described important events of her past, Beth had mentioned a letter from the shape-shifter that talked about their ship.

"I've got a Journal that'll help you translate those," he said, already moving over towards all of Beth's stuff. "It'll take a while, cause Antarian and English don't exactly work well together, but it's better than nothing."

"I don't need it." Alex muttered, already flipping through the papers.

Zan glanced at him. "Huh?"

Alex shrugged, grabbing a couple sheets from lower in the box and pulling them free. He looked over them, eyes drifting back and forth as if he were actually reading them.

"I don't need help translating them." He said after a second, voice a little strained. "After what… after what she did to me, I read this almost as well as I read English."

Zan blinked, watching Alex hit the end of the page and switch to the next. That was impossible. It had to be. Hell – Zan had already learned the language once, and had been studying it for weeks, and even he didn't read it that well. Eyes narrowing, he sat up and grabbed the first Journal he found; a red one that had been thoroughly dog-eared. He flipped it open to the first page and tossed it to Alex.

"Read that."

Alex glanced at him in bemusement. "What, is this like some kind of test?"

Zan rolled his eyes, impatient. "Just read it, opie."

Alex glared, but looked back down at the Journal. "I can't stress enough how important what you do over the next few years will be. The future –"

Zan snapped his wrist, and the Journal flipped back into his hands.

He'd read that Journal over and over. Although it still took him forever to work out Antarian sentences, he could probably recite that one in his sleep. Alex had been completely accurate, if a lot quicker than Zan had expected. Which meant…

He might just have a use for the dude, after all.

"Yo, Al." Zan said softly, easily ignoring the disturbed look Alex tossed him for the nickname. "You any good with computers?"

* * *

"Max, I just don't get it," Isabel said, fifteen minutes after they'd dropped Michael off at his apartment. "Why would Alex just leave like that? Without even saying goodbye?"

"I don't know." Max said softly, eyes fixed on the circle of road in their headlights.

"We should go check on him. It could be something weird – he could be hurt or in trouble or something. God, Max, what if it's Skins? Or the government, or –"

"Isabel." Max said with a little edge to his voice. "Calm down. We can't act rashly right now. Whatever's going on with Alex, we don't know that it's alien-related –"

"Oh, come on, Max –"

"We don't." Max said over her, voice hard but not cutting. "And with everything that's happened so far this year, the last thing we need is to make a stupid move and get ourselves back on the FBI's watch list."

Isabel glared for a moment, then went back to staring out the passenger window. Max squashed the little bubble of guilt that formed in his chest; he'd had a bad feeling about all this since he'd noticed how strange Alex was acting in the Crashdown. But 'acting strange' didn't necessarily mean something dangerous was going on, and he couldn't afford to get everybody freaked out over something that might not even be a problem.

That didn't mean he wouldn't look in to it himself, though…

Isabel didn't speak to him the rest of the drive home, and Max didn't push it. She was worried, and he could sympathize – if Liz had done something like this, he'd be pretty worried, too.

Not that he had any right to be worried about Liz, anymore.

Max felt a twinge in his hand; his shoulders had gone tense and his hands had gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make the leather creak. He forced himself to relax and focused on the road.

When they got home, Isabel called out to their mom and Max went to hang up his jacket. He heard footsteps and turned toward the living room; his mother walked up carrying the phone.

"It's for you. He says he's your biology lab partner?"

She handed it to him with a strange look he couldn't really place, and Max smiled softly at her despite the butterflies in his stomach. He wasn't taking biology this semester, and she knew it. "He probably meant chemistry." He shrugged and the corner of his mouth quirked up. "Which is exactly why I've been doing most of my labs alone."

She frowned. "Have you told your teacher?"

Max hesitated, then shrugged. "He just said he'll grade us individually."

He saw a brief flash of disbelief, and then her face smoothed out into a smile. He smiled back, then gestured at the phone to remind her someone was waiting on the line. She rolled her eyes and turned to walk away; Max kept the phone at his side until she was out of hearing distance.

He put it to his ear and muttered, "Who is this?"

"Yo. My name's Zan." A masculine voice rolled through the phone – a New York accent and a weirdly familiar resonance he couldn't seem to place. Max knew that voice, though, he was sure of it. He was so focused on the sound of it he didn't really register the name. "We need to talk, bro. One Antarian to another."

Max froze, shocked almost as much by the relaxed way the other boy had said the words as by the words themselves. A long moment passed in silence before he found his voice. "I don't know what you're talking about."

He heard an irritated sigh through the earpiece. "Bullshit, dude. Look, if it makes you feel better, you can pick the time and place. It's gotta be somewhere private if we're gonna talk business, but you can bring your sister and your girlfriend and Mikey and even your little human groupies if you want. Ain't nothing I gotta say to you right now that I can't say to them, too."

Max swallowed, hand gripping the handset so hard the plastic groaned. So he knew about Isabel, Tess and Michael, and he knew that at least a few humans knew their secret. Or maybe he'd guessed about the last part, a shot in the dark to lure Max into bringing along Liz and the others so he could find out who they were –

"Well, actually no. Not the Sheriff and his kid. I'm okay with those three Crashdown dorks, but I ain't big on authority figures."

… Okay. There went that idea.

Isabel came around the corner and must've caught something of what he was feeling in his expression. She walked up until she was close enough to hear both him and some of what was said on the other end, going totally still. Max could see the fear on her face.

"How do I know this isn't a trap?" Max muttered, and Isabel's eyes went wide. She mouthed trap?, but Max couldn't exactly explain it to her yet. "How can I trust you?"

"… Most overused question ever, but okay." The other guy muttered, then sighed. "You can't. You don't know me, you don't know what I want, you have no idea what I'm gonna do. So don't trust me." The voice – light and somewhat mocking before – had gone totally serious, and Max was hit again with that feeling of familiarity. Next to him, Isabel frowned. "But shit's coming you can't handle on your own. Kivar's got plans, and they don't include you, or me, or any of your little friends getting out of this alive. So if you're smart, you'll at least hear me out. I'm the enemy of your friggin' enemy, Max, and that means I'm the closest thing you've got to a friend."

The familiar name caught Max's attention, and he glanced over to watch Isabel's reaction. She went almost white, lips pursing and chin dropping as she was reminded again of her last life. It was her expression more than anything that kept Max from just saying no; his whole life, his philosophy on all things alien had been to ignore it. If they didn't think, act, or react like aliens, then the people who threatened them would never be able to find them in a crowd. But they had been found...

And Isabel was afraid.

"Kids!" Their mother's head popped around the corner. She smiled. "Hurry up – dinner in ten."

Isabel smiled weakly over her shoulder, "Okay, mom."

As soon as she disappeared again, Max snapped quietly, "Fine. You know where the UFO Center is?"

A snort. "Kinda hard to miss, dude."

"There, at midnight." Max glanced at Isabel, and she nodded back.

"See ya there, Maxie." Zan chirped, and the line went dead.

Max stared at the phone, wishing he felt at least a little bit more confident in the decision.

* * *

When Zan had realized Alex could read Antarian, he'd immediately handed Alex a notebook filled with designs for alien technology. He said there was more where that came from, and if Alex thought he could pull it off, Zan would like him to try building some of them. Alex had nodded and started thumbing through it, but his mind was stuck on the locked chest in the corner where Zan had gotten the notebook.

Alex waited a full twenty minutes after Zan left before making his way over to the chest. Using a bit of wire he'd found sticking out of the couch in the corner, he started messing with the lock, trying to stumble into whatever trick it was that would open it. His hands were shaking and his eyes kept snapping to the entrance, but he didn't let the nervous tension stop him.

It took him almost half an hour to get it open, and by the time he heard the click his fingers were numb and raw. He glanced at the door again, ears ringing and breathing harsh. He didn't want Zan to walk in and see him poking through his stuff, but he wasn't willing to lose this chance either. So far Zan seemed like an okay guy, but Alex had thought Tess was "okay" once, too.

He hoped he was wrong about this, but too much had changed for him to blindly trust someone just because they'd helped him. He needed to be sure.

Alex cracked open the first notebook he saw and began to read.

* * *

**AN:** So yeah. Sorry this chapters so much shorter than the last one, and sorry everything's moving so slowly. I'm trying to make sure I mention everything I need to, but as a result things are kinda slow paced. Bright side, though, next chapter should be out a lot faster (although no guarantee's on the chapters after that). Also, I'm aware of the mistakes/typos and things I've done, and someday I'll go back and fix them... but for now it's a bit much for me.


	5. Chapter 5: Contact

**Summary**: Liz did what she came to do; she went back into the past and saved Zan. But Zan is nothing if not dangerous, and every action he makes creates a ripple effect that will change the world Liz knew beyond all recognition. It's a new timeline, but does that really mean it will be a better one?

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Liz Parker, Zan, or any of the other characters or places of the TV show (and book series) Roswell.

**AN**: Hello! Holy crap, it's been three months. Um… My bad?

I want to apologize to you guys for the long wait, and also assure you that I haven't given up yet. Actually, I've been really bothered by a number of vague or just plain implausible things in this story (it's been a while since I started writing it, and I didn't see the flaws at the time I started posting), so I've gone back and started working on the revision of Time and Again. I'll be working on this at the same time, but to be totally honest I have absolutely no idea where I'm going with this beyond a few key things I want to do. So… updates may be slow. But I have the next couple chapters done already, so I can at least guarantee those WILL be posted sooner than this one was.

I hope you're alright with being patient with me, though, because it may take me a bit to get this story just where I need it to be for me to get invested in it again.

Anyway, here's a chapter to tide you guys over for a while. Enjoy. (:

* * *

As soon as Liz's parents went to bed, the entire group gathered in the Crashdown for an emergency meeting. Max quickly explained what had happened, Isabel a quiet, nervous presence at his shoulder.

"So this guy just, what… called you out of the blue?" Michael demanded suspiciously from where he straddled one of the Crashdown chairs. Max glanced at him, face rigidly blank. Michael was family, but Max had come to expect the other boy to make the worst possible decision at any given moment. Max would have to keep an eye on him. "How'd he even know who we are?"

"I don't know." Max crossed his arms, staring through the window to the UFO Center across the street. "But he definitely knew. He mentioned each of us specifically..." Max glanced at the group of humans clustered by the counter. "… Including all of you."

"Do you think…" Maria trailed off, voice hesitant and loaded with fear. Everyone turned to look at her and the attention seemed to give here the courage to speak up. "Do you think this… whoever this is, had something to do with why Alex left?"

The silence this time was charged, and Max watched the others trade uneasy glances.

"All we know for sure so far," Max finally said, keeping his voice level so as not to add to the tension in the room, "is that we need to be careful. We can't react until we know what he wants and whose side he's on. Is that understood?"

Max turned a light glare on Michael for the last question, but the blonde teen just rolled his eyes and looked away. Isabel stepped forward, trying to physically block the annoyance building between the two. She turned to Max, arms crossed and shoulders hunched. "Shouldn't we be heading over there? I mean, we need to get there before him, right?"

Max stared down at the floor. "I'm going alone."

"What?" Michael asked sharply, standing up so quickly his chair almost fell over. "You've got to be kidding me."

"Michael –" Max started with a sigh, but Michael immediately spoke over him.

"No, Max. This is stupid." Michael ranted, gesturing across the street with a wave of his hand. "We don't know who this guy is, or what he can do, or even whether or not he'll be alone. This could be a trap for all we know –"

"Exactly." Max snapped, shoving every bit of authority he could muster into his voice. "This could be a trap, and if it is, we're not all going to be packed in one building waiting for the bomb to drop. I'll be inside, and the three of you will be watching from nearby in case something goes wrong."

"At which point, you'll either be dead or a hostage," Liz muttered out of nowhere, immediately turning red as the collective gaze of the group immediately focused on her. "I – I just… Listen, Max, I know you think you going alone keeps the rest of us safe, but if you get captured you already know how far we're all willing to go to get you back. So, instead of putting yourself in that kind of situation, why don't you just… I don't know, take some people with you as back-up? Either he's lying and there'll be a lot of them coming at you quickly, in which case the more of you there are inside the longer you can hold them back until the rest of us can help, or he's telling the truth and it's just him in there, and with more than one of you in there you don't have to worry so much about whether he wants a fight or not, because you outnumber him… you know?"

Before Max could even think of a reply to that, Isabel piped up. "She's right, Max. You can't do this on your own. Not this time."

"We're going with you." Michael agreed, crossing his arms across his chest and glaring at Max as if he expected some kind of argument. Max considered it, but gave up quickly; as much as he didn't want to admit it, Liz was right. He still clearly remembered everything they'd done for him when he'd been in the White Room, and he wasn't sure they could pull something like that off a second time.

"Fine." Max sighed. "But just the three of us. Tess… you're going to be our back-up, okay? If anything goes wrong – if he doesn't come alone, or if you see any kind of problem, I need you to get a warning to us and maybe send them off course or something if it seems like it's something we can't handle. Can you do that?"

"Of course." Tess smiled. She wore an understanding expression Max was getting all too used to lately, and he found himself smiling back.

"We're going too." Maria said, stepping forward and wrapping her arm around Liz's shoulder. Liz tossed her a startled glance, then caught the determined look on her friends face and nodded. With her best friend's agreement, Maria jutted her chin forward as if preparing herself for a fight.

"Hell no." Michael immediately retorted, face twisting in protective disgust. "Just because you know about aliens doesn't mean you get to tag along. You're humans, Maria – you'd only get in our way."

Max cast a scolding look in Michael's direction. For the most part though, he actually agreed with Michael – he just wished the blonde had had enough sense to say it a little less confrontationally. Max still didn't get how, after dating for more than a year, Michael still hadn't figured out that the best way to get Maria to do something was to say she couldn't.

Maria pursed her lips, glaring at her boyfriend. "I'm sorry, but I don't remember asking for your permission."

"Maria…" Max cut in regretfully. "He's right. As much as we appreciate the offer, you guys have no way of defending yourselves from an alien attack. If this comes down to a fight, we can't afford to be distracted keeping you guys safe. I know that sounds harsh, but…"

Maria's arm dropped from Liz's shoulder as she took a step towards Max. "Are you kidding? What if this guy has Alex?"

That very question had been in the back of his mind ever since he'd answered the phone, but Max hadn't wanted to panic anybody by bringing it up. By the silence that followed, Max wondered if he should've brought it up first if only to find a less abrupt way to bring it up.

"We don't know that." Max said.

Maria huffed. "Yeah, well we _do_ know he was totally lying about the funeral thing –"

"What we know," Max stressed, cutting her off. "Is that _if_ this guy had something to do with Alex's disappearance, then we need to figure out why. And we can't focus on getting answers from him if we're busy watching out for you two."

Maria glared for a moment, and then all the air seemed to go out of her. She backed up again, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Liz, looking anywhere but at Max. "Fine."

Max stared at the blonde girl for a minute, suspicious of the sudden turnaround. He shook his head; whatever she was up to - _if _she was up to something - he didn't have the time to work it out. The Valenti's would make sure she didn't follow the three of them over, at least...

It was ten minutes to midnight.

He nodded to Michael and Isabel, and the three of them turned and quietly left the Crashdown.

* * *

Zan didn't bother using the door. He'd waited only until the owner locked up before opening a door in the wall and slipping inside, carefully making his way through the exhibits.

He'd noticed pretty quick the general theme of Roswell; little green men with bulbous heads and blank black eyes. They were everywhere – painted on shop windows, peering at him from the front of t-shirts. There were even street lamps that glowed under glass shades shaped like alien-heads. It was totally ridiculous, and it had never failed to make him snort and roll his eyes.

But there was something different about seeing one of those dorky little stuffed figurines laying on a slab before a couple of scrub-wearing mannequins with their hands glued to scalpels. It was almost like seeing a joking cartoon about Jack-the-Ripper or an upbeat musical on the Holocaust. Something serious and tragic and world-ending depicted in the least respectful manner people could come up with.

He couldn't smile at it, but Zan wasn't really as affected as he should have been, either. The only two people he knew of that had survived the crash – Cal and the other one, whatever his name was – had both been world class dicks; Cal ran out on his charges at the first available opportunity, and shifter number two ran out on three to raise the other as a friggin traitor.

Zan took another step closer to the little figure, staring down at the fabric of its plushy little face as if he could see real features behind it, and he wondered who it represented. From what little he knew about the crash, he knew two had died before the humans ever got their hands on them, which… well, considering they fell from space, it wasn't really all that surprising. For the first time, Zan found himself wondering what would've been different if those two had been the one's who'd lived.

Would they have done any better?

The sound of the front door opening behind him snapped him out of his thoughts, and Zan felt his body go rigid. He'd planned to pick a good spot to watch them enter – somewhere they wouldn't see him at first, so he could get a look at them and see who exactly he'd be facing, but he'd lost track of time staring at the creepy stuffed alien autopsy display. Some stupid part of him was hoping it would just be Max and that Tess chick. Or, shit, even the Sheriff's kid would be okay; he'd never known anybody who wore the guy's face (hopefully), so that already put him in a class all his own here.

The muffled voices behind him told Zan he wouldn't be that lucky.

Zan closed his eyes and silently cursed.

They didn't notice him for a few seconds – he could tell when they saw him there, back-lit by the light of the morgue scene, because they instantly fell silent. Even their footsteps came to an abrupt and kind of awkward halt. Zan ignored it, staring down at the little alien like he could somehow find his composure in the disinterested – and oddly patronizing – green face.

Eventually, though… he had to turn around.

As he probably should have expected, his eyes landed on the single most jarring face first.

Lonnie's.

Well, no – obviously not Lonnie, this was Isabel or whatever her name was. His sister's clone, looking so much like Lonnie except… well, not like Lonnie at all, because she had long hair and a clean face and his sister's signature smirk was nowhere to be found. She still had the vain little tilt to her chin, but it was a touch too high, a bit too rigid. Like she was trying too hard.

Rath's double stood just behind her, staring at Zan in perfect silence. His hair hung around his face, his hands were at his side, and he was wearing a friggin button down shirt. No matter what Beth had thought of the guy, to Zan he looked ridiculously straight-laced and upright. Fucking pillar of the community.

A hand on his back, pushing him into traffic –

_Picked a fight with the wrong girl, y'know?_

Zan hadn't stopped thinking about Lonnie since the night she and Rath had turned on him. He'd blamed the whole thing on her, because hers was the biggest betrayal. But Zan was looking at the face of the man he'd called brother for the first time in almost half a year, and the conflicting emotions that hit him nearly knocked him off his feet.

Rath had fallen, given in to Lonnie. Betrayed Zan.

Rath was dead.

Beth appeared at Zan's shoulder, face inches from his and her hand a comforting weight on his shoulder. "Focus, Zan. You can do this."

Zan automatically glanced down, eyes locking with the wide, concerned gaze of his friend. Beth smiled weakly up at him and the breath he hadn't realized he was holding came out in a rush. She squeezed his shoulder and stepped back. He looked back at the three clones in front of him, confident now that she was there backing him up.

For all that was worth.

"Quite the crowd." Zan muttered, keeping his eyes locked on Max. It might be eerie as shit to go eye-to-eye of somebody who looked exactly like what Zan would've looked like if he'd been raised in the friggin Gap, but it sure as hell beat the alternative.

Max's eyes went wide as his hands tensed up at his side, fingers going rigidly straight. It was the most telling sign that Max was mentally preparing himself to fight, although the look on his face alone made that pretty obvious. Zan sighed and stood perfectly still; he thought about putting his hands up in the human sign of surrender, but considering what showing your palm meant to most Antarians… yeah, probably not the best idea.

"Hey. Chill." Zan said clearly, just a touch of exasperation in his voice. "I'm just here to talk."

"You're Zan."

Instinctively – traitorously – his eyes followed the voice.

Those familiar brown eyes hit him just as hard as before, but for entirely different reasons. They'd gone wide and almost awed, her mouth opening a little and every feature on her face softer than he'd been expecting it to be. It was Lonnie's face, but… he couldn't remember Lonnie even once wearing an expression like that.

_You ruined everything!_

"Your name's Zan, right?" Isabel asked, her voice an eerie echo of the screaming one in his memory. Where before she'd just blurted it out, apparently just saying what she was thinking, now she sounded uncertain. "Ava… told us you'd died."

Zan scoffed softly. He was conscious of the others catching on to what she'd said; one mass indrawn breath making it clear they were only now realizing the implications. Apparently, his name alone hadn't been enough to make it click. "Yeah, I… kinda _did_."

They stared. In the seconds of silence that followed, Zan could practically feel their expectation. They were waiting for some kind of a follow up – expecting him to explain to them exactly what it meant to 'kind of' die.

_They'll be waiting for a long ass time._

Beth stepped around Zan, putting herself between him and the others and crossing her arms over her chest. Zan blinked, thrown by the unexpected move. She turned a scolding look in his direction.

"You need to tell them the truth, Zan." She said clearly, glancing back over her shoulder with a gentle smile. The expression made his stomach clench, although he couldn't even begin to guess why. "They need to know. _I_ need to know."

Zan grit his teeth, trying not to think of the younger Beth. He wasn't ready to think about that – to plan for the moment he'd see her again, a real version of Beth who was breathing and speaking and not fucking _vanishing_ every time he looked away.

_Yeah, maybe_. Zan conceded, knowing he'd have to confront all of this eventually. But not now. Not yet._ But that doesn't mean I have to tell the rest of them._

Beth sighed and shook her head, practically radiating disappointment. Zan smiled bitterly. Beth – the _real_ Beth – wasn't here. And he wasn't about to let a _figment of his imagination_ decide who he bared his heart and soul to.

Surprisingly enough, Max picked that very moment to bite the bullet.

"How'd you survive?"

Zan's eyes darted back to his double, tension already building in his shoulders. He looked away quickly, gaze fixating on a distant display, and shrugged. "I was… pretty fucked up. But somebody kinda saved my life, and to pay her back she wanted me to help you losers out."

Beth shut her eyes with a groan.

Ra… _Michael_ scoffed, looking Zan over with disbelief. His arms came up to cross over his chest as he puffed up a bit – a general kind of challenge Zan found way too familiar to be comforting. "Yeah right."

"You got somethin' to say to me, fry-boy?" Zan snapped automatically.

Beth glared. "Could you at least _try_ not to be an ass?"

"You know what - screw you." Michael snarled back, talking right over Beth. Which – even though Zan knew Michael couldn't hear her, and Zan_ himself_ was ignoring her completely – Zan found insanely annoying. "We don't need your help, okay? We've handled ourselves pretty well so far."

"Oh, yeah? Against who, exactly? A bunch of suits and that dick Nikolas?" Zan shook his head and smirked, watching the faces of all three go a little shell-shocked. "I got news for you, Mikey; all those guys were _kid stuff_ compared to what's coming for you."

They stared. After a heavy moment of silence, Max stepped forward, face rigidly composed. "What do you mean, what's _coming_ for us?"

Zan crossed his arms and leaned against the closest display. "What do I mean? I mean _Kivar_, Maxie. You know, the guy who chopped all our heads off the _last_ time around?"

"That's impossible." Isabel blurted, and Zan was struck by how pale she'd gone at the words. Her eyes had gone impossibly wide, and a fear Zan never would've expected in response to her former lover's name was obvious by the way she'd started to tremble. "Kivar's on a whole other planet. He wouldn't – he's not even on Earth, how could he…"

Zan watched her for a minute before looking away, unnerved. He wanted to say something cutting that would make her realize how stupid an assumption they'd made, thinking they were safe from him here. But the look on her face had totally messed with his head in ways that should've pissed him off, but… didn't.

"What are you saying?" Isabel asked as soon as the silence started to feel stretched. "Are you telling us that Kivar… is coming _here_? To _Earth_?"

_Shouldn't you be celebrating?_

Zan swallowed back one acidic response after another, a little blindsided by the sudden burst of rage. He almost wanted her to be angry – wanted this to be Lonnie he was fighting, instead of this girl who looked so much like her it actually made his chest ache.

But she _wasn't_ Lonnie. She was Isabel; a girl Beth had known and loved, one who'd apparently been loyal right up until the day she died.

She wasn't anything_ like_ Lonnie.

Zan smiled bitterly. "Yeah."

"But _why_?" She demanded, eyes starting to dart wildly around the room. "What possible reason could he have to travel all the way here? You can't… you can't really mean he's coming here for _us_." Her voice trailed off, wide, panicky brown eyes locking on him. A moment's pause, and then she said weakly, "...Do you?"

Zan blinked, shrugged, and looked away. "I ain't got the first god damn clue why he's coming. All I know is he seems pretty friggin' determined to come here, and he's bringing an army along for the ride."

"Wait, you're…" Max cut in. For the first time since the beginning of the conversation, the guarded look had disappeared, and in its place Zan could make out suspicion and the beginnings of actual fear. It was weird how hard it was to read the other guy, considering technically they had the same face. "You're talking about _war_."

"Umm…" Zan's face pulled into a patronizing frown. "Duh. This is Kivar we're talking about, remember? War's kind of his thing."

The silence was brittle, frigid and thick, and Zan wondered for a minute how much trouble they'd actually been in if their immediate reaction was to freeze. Eventually, Max turned a stern frown in Zan's direction. "You can't know that for sure."

"I… kinda do." Zan retorted, face twisting in a frown.

Max glared. "How?"

And… that was where Zan got stuck.

How did he explain that he knew there would be war because – technically – it had already happened in a previous, now non-existant time-line? That it'd happened _twice_, and the only reason Zan knew about it was because Max's ex had traveled back in time from like a decade and a half in the future, and for some reason decided not to warn him or any of her friends, but some stranger delinquent dead kid from New York?

How did he explain any of this without losing all his cred?

Zan rubbed his eyes with his fingers, then squeezed them together to pinch the bridge of his nose. He started cutting out all the parts he figured he probably shouldn't tell them. Once he had the story all laid out, he looked up to spot Beth shaking her head with disappointment. She wanted him to tell them the truth.

_Tough shit._ He muttered in his mind. _They ain't _my_ friends…_

"Beth – the chick that saved my life – she… she showed me stuff." Zan said aloud, trying to figure out how to tell them what she knew without giving too much away. Or maybe how to imply it without actually lying, which he already knew Beth would be totally against anyway. "There are pockets of Skins loyal to Kivar hidden all over the planet. Some of them aren't any bigger than a few dozen, but there are groups as big as a couple hundred in some places. They've had decades to figure out how we work – to get people in the government, to figure out where we're weakest... pretty much _everything_ every crackpot conspiracy nutjob has been saying for like, the last forty years."

All of which he'd learned from one of Beth's journals, so it was totally true. And speaking of things he'd learned from the journals…

Zan looked up, locking eyes with Max. "Which you should already know about, since I hear you had a run in with a Skin Senator not that long ago."

Michael blinked and snarled, "How do you know that?"

Zan smirked. Haha, too easy. "Beth told me."

"Okay." Michael glared, shoving his index finger at Zan, as if that would somehow make the stranger fall in line. "Who the hell is this Beth lady and why does she know all this stuff about us? You know what – forget that, if this chick wants to help us so bad, why isn't _she_ the one talking to us instead of you?"

Zan blinked. His throat squeezed and it hurt to swallow. "She… couldn't. She ain't here anymore."

Michael scoffed, evidently oblivious to the sudden shift in Zan's expression. "So what, this… all-knowing benefactor of yours just up and_ left_? That's real convenient."

"Not fucking really." Zan snarled back immediately, jaw clenching as he fought back the urge to get in Michael's face. "I never said she left, dumbass. I said she was _gone_."

The silence that hit the room then was filled with enough embarrassed shock to keep the three Roswell teenagers speechless. The looks on their faces, surprise mixed with a little reluctant guilt, dulled the edge of his anger.

He looked for Beth, but she wasn't there anymore.

_Fucking fitting_.

"We were heading to Roswell and we kinda ran into Nik." Zan swallowed, looking down at his feet and doing his best to ignore their expressions. Saying this shit was hard enough without having to play it to an audience. "And Lonnie. Beth… she got me out, but she didn't… she didn't make it very far."

Zan heard somebody gasp softly, and his eyes flicked up to follow the source. His chest squeezed when he saw Isabel staring at him, eyes wide and watery, mouth still a little gaped.

"Oh, god…" She muttered. "I'm so sorry."

Zan stared.

"… The fuck did they put in your test tube, Princess?"

Isabel blinked, jaw snapping shut and cheeks going pink. The boys at her side both tensed, taking Zan's honest confusion as a veiled insult. Zan shook his head, and for the first time in a while…

… he smiled.

His sister – not his sister's double, but his sister, his real sister from so long ago that he could barely remember – saw the look and gaped.

"Don't get your gym-shorts in a twist, Maxie." Zan said with genuine amusement, eyes still locked on Isabel. He'd thought of her as Lonnie's double, and he knew he wasn't totally over it yet. But that look in her eyes was a look he'd never even once seen on Lonnie. But he'd seen it – or at least it's alien equivalent… on Vilandra. The real Vilandra, back before she'd ever met Kivar.

Zan bowed his head to her, still smiling. "I meant it as a compliment."

They traded secretive looks, and Zan rolled his eyes. He was tired of the discussion and in too good a mood to start a fight about it. Time to cut the meeting short.

Zan stalked over to a table by the wall and snagged a brochure, and in an instant it had formed itself into a map with his name and number on the top. The map wouldn't lead to his sort-of-house – Zan wasn't stupid enough to give a bunch of distrustful teens access to the place he was storing their mind-fucked friend, after all – but to an arroyo not far from where he was staying.

"Look," Zan said, letting his hand drop and watching the little paper drift towards Max, Michael and Isabel in a slow, non-threatening arc. If there'd been any humans around to see, Zan would've been screwed – the path of the brochure was too linear, too controlled to be natural, but the casual display of power only helped his cause. "I got no plans to spend my night here defending myself to you dorks. You wanna talk, call me and we'll meet up to do some training. Otherwise, I… guess I'll just see you around."

Max's face slackened in shock, but it was Michael who blurted out the big question. "Wait – what? What do you mean, you'll see us around?"

Zan smirked, oddly amused by the reaction. "What about 'see you around' is over your head, Mikey?"

Zan could see Michael's jaw clenching from clear across the room, but this time it was Isabel that spoke, her eyes gone wide and her tone almost impossible to read. "You… Are you saying you're staying?"

Zan smiled. "That's what I'm sayin'."

Max stepped forward. He'd visibly loosened up after the news about Beth, but he'd gone all rigid and stern again. "No, you're not. It's too risky. Someone will see you and start asking questions."

Zan snorted and decided on sarcasm. "Yeah, because the first thing everybody thinks when they see two guys who look alike is that one of 'em has _got_ to be an alien clone."

Max glared. "I'm being serious."

"So am I." Zan immediately responded. "Max... I don't know how to make this any clearer to you, man. Kivar's coming. I don't know if it'll be tomorrow or ten years from now, but he's coming, and when he gets here it's gonna be a war unlike anything these idiot humans ever put in their bullshit b-rated alien flicks. And whether you like it or not…"

Zan took a couple steps forward until he was only about a foot away from Max.

"You're gonna need me."

For a second, no one said a word.

"What about Alex?"

Zan blinked, glancing over at Isabel. "What?"

"Alex." She repeated, louder this time. She crossed her arms over her chest, and for the first time since Zan had looked at her face some twenty minutes before, she looked totally cold. Like Lonnie, even. Zan flinched. "Did you have anything to do with what happened to him? Because if you did, I _swear_ –"

"You'll do what?" Zan snapped, irritated all over again by her resemblance to his sister. "You ain't ever really been big on throwing down, Princess, and even then I'm pretty friggin' sure I could take all three of you in a fight."

Her startled look eased some of Zan's anger. Actually, that expression made him feel a little guilty for saying it at all. Oh, not enough to take it back, but enough that he suddenly found it hard to look her in the eye.

"You wanna bet –" Michael snapped, taking an aggressive step forward. Max reached out a hand to hold him back, and the blonde boy glanced at his leader with a touch of old, bitter resentment on his face.

"Michael." Max said, and left it at that. Max kept his eyes locked on his double, seemingly calm and collected. Seemingly in total control.

Zan felt a some resentment of his own.

"He told us he went to a family member's funeral." Max said, voice rigidly stoic. "But we asked his father, and not only did nobody die, but Alex told _him_ he was going on some kind of week-long class retreat thing. You think you can explain that?"

Zan scoffed. "Look, I didn't do anything to your boy, aight? Far as I know, he left by choice. His skinny ass high-tailed it out of town on a friggin' bike late yesterday night. That's all I can tell you."

He didn't say he had nothing to do with it. He didn't say that was all he knew. Which made the whole thing… well, _mostly_ honest, anyway. Not that that stopped the three of them from staring at him with disbelief written all over their faces, though.

"You know what?" Zan muttered, backing away. "I don't have to defend myself to you guys. If you want to talk, you know how to get a hold of me, otherwise… I guess I'll see ya around."

Zan turned and waved at them over his shoulder. He was careful not to make any gestures as he walked towards – and then through – the far wall. He walked quickly; he'd planned to go wait until the Roswell group dispersed and then try and talk to Parker, but there was something else he needed to do first, now.

Alex would be needing a cell phone.

* * *

**AN:** Okay... if you have any issues with this chapter, feel free to tell me. I had the hardest time writing it, so if any of you know how to make it better (and I agree), I'd be happy to edit it in. Also, I still want to know what you guys want for the pairing, although just about everybody seems to favor Zan/Liz nowadays. Review and tell me what you think.

Next chapter, Zan meets Past-Present-w/e-Liz!


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